“Deny me!  No, you did not.  Neither did you grant it me, but put me off with lying promises.  You thought then you could win back the faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de Mar.  Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him.  But it would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the royalist army.  I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry’s camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar again.”

“Mar is not in the race now.  You need not speak of him, nor of your brother Charles, either.”

“No; I can well understand that my brother’s is not a pleasant name in your ears,” Lucas agreed.  “You acknowledged one King Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise you mean.”

“I have no desire to be King of France,” Mayenne began angrily.

“Have you not?  That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle!  You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder.”

“Nom de dieu, Paul—­” Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on: 

“Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle.  I think you in bad case, but I am ready to sink or swim with you.  So long as the hand of Lorance is in your bestowing I am your faithful servant.  I have not hesitated to risk the gallows to serve you.  Last March I made my way here, disguised, to tell you of the king’s coming change of faith and of St. Quentin’s certain defection.  I demanded then my price, my marriage with mademoiselle.  But you put me off again.  You sent me back to Mantes to kill you St. Quentin.”

“Aye.  And you have been about it these four months, and you have not killed him.”

Lucas reddened with ire.

“I am no Jacques Clement to stab and be massacred.  You cannot buy such a service of me, M. de Mayenne.  If I do bravo’s work for you I choose my own time and way.  I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you to deal with as it liked you.  But you with your army at your back were afraid to kill him.  You flinched and waited.  You dared not shoulder the onus of his death.  Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to make his own son’s the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your way—­”

“Let us be accurate, Paul,” Mayenne said.  “Mar was not in my way; he was of no consequence to me.  You mean, put him out of your way.”

“He was in your way, too.  Since he would not join the Cause he was a hindrance to it.  You had as much to gain as I by his ruin.”