“Insolence, sirrah!  I do not bargain with my servants.”

His words were like whips.  I flinched before his proud anger, and for the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his sentence.  And again he did what I could not guess.  He cried out: 

“Felix, you are blind, besotted, mad.  You know not what you do.  I am in constant danger.  The city is filled with my enemies.  The Leagues hate me and are ever plotting mischief against me.  Every day their mistrust and hatred grow.  I did a bold thing in coming to Paris, but I had a great end to serve—­to pave a way into the capital for the Catholic king and bring the land to peace.  For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk my life to-night on foot in the streets.  If I am killed, more than my life is lost.  The Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours be harried to a desert in the civil wars!”

I had braced myself to bear Monsieur’s anger, but this unlooked-for appeal pierced me through and through.  All the love and loyalty in me—­and I had much, though it may not have seemed so—­rose in answer to Monsieur’s call.  I fell on my knees before him, choked with sobs.

Monsieur’s hand lay on my head as he said quietly: 

“Now, Felix, speak.”

I answered huskily: 

“Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?”

“Judas betrayed his master.”

It was my last stand.  My last redoubt had fallen.  I raised my head to tell him all.

Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le Duc, I saw—­not him, but Yeux-gris—­Yeux-gris looking at me with warm good will, as he had looked when he was saving me from Gervais.  I saw him, I say, plain before my eyes.  The next instant there was nothing but Monsieur’s face of rising impatience.

I rose to my feet, and said: 

“Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell.”

“Nom de dieu!” he shouted, springing up.

I shut my eyes and waited.  Had he slain me then and there it were no more than my deserts.

“Monsieur,” said Vigo, immovably, “shall I go for the boot?”

I opened my eyes then.  Monsieur stood quite still, his brow knotted, his hands clenched as if to keep them off me.

“Monsieur,” I said, “send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever you please.  I deserve it, and I will bear it.  Monsieur, it is not that I will not tell.  It is something stronger than I. I cannot.”

He burst into an angry laugh.

“Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it.  My faith! though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I seem to be getting the worst of it.”

“There is the boot, Monsieur.”

Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.

“That does not help me, my good Vigo.  I cannot torture a Broux.”

“There Monsieur is wrong.  The lad has been disloyal and insolent, if he is a Broux.”