“Swashbuckler!” he murmured.  “How many times have you filched the Chevalier of his crowns by the use of clogged dice? . . .  God pardon me, but I am lusting for that man’s life!” His hand clutched his rosary and his lips moved in prayer, though the anger did not immediately die out of his eyes.  He wandered among the crowds.  Words and vague sentences filtered through the noise.  Two gentlemen were conversing lowly.  Brother Jacques neared them unconsciously, still at his beads.

“On my honor, it is as I tell you.  The Chevalier . . .”

Brother Jacques raised his eyes,

“What! forfeited his rights in a moment of madness?  Proclaimed himself to be . . . before you all?  Impossible!”

The beads slipped through Brother Jacques’s fingers.  He leaned against the wall, his eyes round, his nostrils expanded.  A great wave of pity surged over him.  He saw nothing but the handsome youth who had spoken kindly to him at the Candlestick in Paris.  That word!  That invisible, searing iron!  He straightened, and his eyes flashed like points of steel in the sunshine.  That grim, wicked old man; not a thousand times a thousand livres would give him the key to Heaven.  Brother Jacques left the tavern and walked along the wharves, breathing deeply of the vigorous sea-air.

Victor encountered the vicomte as the latter was about to go aboard.

“Ah,” said the vicomte; “so you ran about with a drawn sword last night?  Monsieur, you are only a boy.”  The vicomte never lost his banter; it was a habit.

“I was hot-headed and in wine.”  Victor had an idea in regard to the vicomte.

“The devil is always lurking in the pot; so let us not stir him again.”

“Willingly.”

“I compliment you on your good sense.  Monsieur, I’ve been thinking seriously.  Has it not occurred to you that Madame de Brissac has that paper?”

“Would she seek Spain?” said Victor.

“True.  But supposing Mazarin should be seeking her, paper or no paper, to force the truth from her?”

“The supposition, does not balance.  She knows no more than you or I.”

“And Monsieur le Comte’s play-woman?”

“Horns of Panurge!” excitedly.  “You have struck a new note, Vicomte.  I recollect hearing that she was confined in some one of the city prisons.  The sooner the Saint Laurent sails, the better.”

“Would that some one we knew would romp into town from Paris.  He might have news.”  The vicomte bit the ends of his mustache.

The opening of the tavern door cut short their conversation.  A man entered rudely.  He pressed and jostled every one in his efforts to reach Maitre le Borgne.  He was a man of splendid physical presence.  His garments, though soiled and bedraggled by rough riding, were costly and rich.  His spurs were bloody; and the dullness of the blood and the brightness of the steel were again presented in his fierce eyes.  The face was not pleasing; it was too squarely hewn, too emotional; it indexed the heart too readily, its passions, its loves and its hates.  There was cunning in the lips and caution in the brow; but the face was too mutable.