At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making naught by it.

“The messer is very much occupied?” he asked with exceeding deference.  “The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he is occupied with great matters?  Oh, that can I well believe, and I cry the messer’s pardon.  For when the mind is taken up with affairs of state, it is distasteful to listen even for a moment to light talk of maids and jewels.”

Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly unconscious, was sorting over his treasures.  I made up my mind his queer talk was but the outlandish way of a foreigner.  He looked at me again, serious and respectful.

“The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous encounters.  Is it not so?  Then he will do well to carry ever over his heart the sacred image of our Lord.”

He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended a crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon it.  Even in Monsieur’s chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin, was nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm of the hand.  The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed myself in reverence.  I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix; the stranger all unwittingly had struck a bull’s-eye.  I had committed grave offence against God, but perhaps if, putting gewgaws aside, I should give my all for this cross, he would call the account even.  I knew nothing of the value of a carving such as this, but I remembered I was not moneyless, and I said, albeit somewhat shyly: 

“I cannot take the rosary.  But I should like well the crucifix.  But then, I have only ten pistoles.”

“Ten pistoles!” he repeated contemptuously.  “Corpo di Bacco!  The workmanship alone is worth twenty.”  Then, viewing my fallen visage, he added:  “However, I have received fair treatment in this house, beshrew me but I have!  I have made good sales to your young count.  What sort of master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?”

“Oh, there’s nobody like him,” I answered, “except, of course, M. le Duc.”

“Ah, then you have two masters?” he inquired curiously, yet with a certain careless air.  It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he was a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman.  But he should gain nothing from me.

“This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin,” I said.  “Surely you could not come in at the gate without discovering that?”

“He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?”

“Assuredly,” I replied cautiously.

“More of a man than the Comte de Mar?”

I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been for my hopes of the crucifix.  If he planned to sell it to me cheap, thereby hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I should not buy it at his price—­and withhold the information.  So I made civil answer: