“But to France will suit very well,” said the King.  “For it is to France that I designed to send you.  I have plenty of couriers who can take written messages, and I have plenty of men who can talk—­some think, too much; but I have no one at hand at this moment whom I can send to Court, and who will acquit himself well there, and that can take a message too—­none, that is, that is not occupied.  What do you say, Mr. Mallock?  Would a couple of months there please you?”

Here then was the time for my announcement; for I knew that if I did not make it then I should make it never.

I stood up; and my heart beat thickly.

“Sir,” I said.  “Six months ago I would have run anywhere to serve you.  But in six months many things have happened; and I cannot serve a Prince any more who cannot keep his word even to save the innocent.  I had best be gone again to Rome, I think, and see what they can give me there.  I am sick of England, which I once loved so much.”

It was those very words—­or others very like them that I said.  I do not know where I got the courage to say them, for my life lay altogether in the King’s hand:  a word from him, or even silence, and I should have kicked my heels that night in Newgate, and a week or two later in the air, on a charge of being in with the Jesuits in their plot.  Yet I said them; for I could say nothing else.

His Majesty’s face turned black as thunder as I began; and when I was done it was all stiff with pride.

“That is your mind, Mr. Mallock, then?” he said.

“That is my mind, Sir,” I answered him.

And then a change went over his face once more.  God knows why he relented; I think it may have been that he had somewhat of a fancy for me, and remembered how I had pleased him and tried to serve him.  And when he spoke, it was very gently indeed.

“Mr. Mallock,” he said, “those are very brave words.  But I think they are not worthy of a man of your parts.  For consider; were you not sent here by the Holy Father to help a poor sinner who had need of it?  And is it Catholic charity to leave the sinner because of his sins?”

I said nothing to that; for I was all confounded at his mildness.  I suppose I had braced myself for something very different.

“It is true I am not a Catholic; but were you not sent here, in answer to my entreaty, that you might help to make it easy for me to become one?  Is it apostolic, then, to run away so soon—­”

“If Your Majesty,” I burst out, “would but shew some signs—­”

He lifted his eyebrows at that.

“Signs!  In these days?” he said.  “Why, I should hang, myself, in a week’s time!  Are these the days, think you, to shew Catholicism?  Why; do you not think that my own heart is not near broken with all I have had to do?”

He spoke with extraordinary passion; for that was his way when he was very deeply moved (which, to tell the truth, however, was not very often).  But I have never known a man so careless and indolent on the surface, who had a softer heart than His Sacred Majesty, if it could but be touched.