“Then that is where we differ, uncle,” Lucas answered with a cold sneer.  “You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the Church and the King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare of Charles of Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne.  But I, Paul of Lorraine, your humble nephew, lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I am toiling for no one but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine.  I should find it most inconvenient to get on without a head on my shoulders, and I shall do my best to keep it there.”

“You need not tell me that; I know it well enough,” Mayenne answered.  “You are each for himself, none for me.  At the same time, Paul, you will do well to remember that your interest is to forward my interest.”

“To the full, monsieur.  And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet.  You need not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than any man in your ranks.”

“Well,” Mayenne rejoined, “get on with your tale.”

Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word of blame.  He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M. le Duc’s departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with a sharp oath.

“What! by daylight?”

“Aye.  He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at night.”

“He went out in broad day?”

“So Vigo said.  I saw him not,” Lucas answered with something of his old nonchalance.

“Mille tonnerres du diable!” Mayenne shouted.  “If this is true, if he got out in broad day, I’ll have the head of the traitor that let him.  I’ll nail it over his own gate.”

“It is not worth your fret, monsieur,” Lucas said lightly.  “If you did, how long would it avail? Souvent homme trahie; that is the only fixed fact about him.  If they pass St. Quentin to-day, they will pass some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after.”

Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some deeper emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.

     “Souvent homme trahie,
     Mal habile qui s’y fie,”

he repeated musingly.  He might have been saying over the motto of the house of Lorraine.  For the Guises believed in no man’s good faith, as no man believed in theirs.

“Souvent homme trahie,” Mayenne said again, as if in the words he recognized a bitter verity.  “And that is as true as King Francis’s version.  I suppose you will be the next, Paul.”

“When I give up hope of Lorance,” Lucas said bluntly.

I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them:  Mayenne, because, for all his power and splendour and rank next to a king’s and ability second to none, he dared trust no man—­not the son of his body, not his brother.  He had made his own hell and dwelt in it, and there was no need to wish him any ill.  And Lucas, perjured traitor, was farther from the goal of his desire than if we had slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.