“I will look at your wares.”

M. Etienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing his Highness that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.

“How came you in Paris, then?”

M. Etienne for the fourth time went through with his tale.  I think this time he must have trembled over it.  My Lord Mayenne had not the reputation of being easily gulled.  For aught we knew, he might be informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris this year.  He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to himself the number of monsieur’s lies.  But if M. Etienne trembled in his soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this.  At its finish Mayenne said: 

“Come in here.”

The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his Grace of Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the window where he had sat with Lucas night before last.  I clinched my teeth to keep them from chattering together.  Not Grammont’s brutality, not Lucas’s venom, not Mlle. de Tavanne’s rampant suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly as did Mayenne’s amiable composure.  He made me feel as I had felt when I entered the tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I could not see.  Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a way, and far below the still surface of the water.  You hang over the edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look through iron as discern how deep the water is.  I seemed to see clearly that Mayenne suspected us not in the least.  He was as placid as a summer day, turning over the contents of the box, showing little interest in us, much in our wares, every now and then speaking a generous word of praise or asking a friendly question.  He was the very model of the gracious prince; the humble tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have worshipfully loved him.  Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew us; that he was amusing himself with us.  Presently, when he tired, he would walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab us.

Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I should have braced myself, I trow, to meet it.  The certainty would have been bearable; I had courage to face ruin.  It was the uncertainty that was so heart-shaking—­like crossing a morass in the dark.  We might be on the safe path; we might with every step be wandering away farther and farther into the treacherous bog; there was no way to tell.  Mayenne was quite the man to be kindly patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich present for a friend.  He was also the man to sit in the presence of his enemy, unbetraying, tranquil, assured, waiting.  It seemed to me that in a few minutes more of this I should go mad; I should scream out:  “Yes, I am Felix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!”

But before I had verily come to this, something happened to change the situation.  Entered like a young tempest, slamming the door after him, Lucas.