The Coadjutor fixed his baleful eyes on him.  “Mirepoix,” he said grimly, “can explain nothing!  Nothing!  I dare him to explain!”

And certainly Mirepoix thus challenged was silent.  “Come,” the priest continued peremptorily, turning to the lady who had entered with him, “your sister must leave with us at once.  We have no time to lose.”

“But what what does it mean!” Madame de Pavannes said, as though she hesitated even now.  “Is there danger still?”

“Danger!” the priest exclaimed, his form seeming to swell, and the exaltation I had before read in his voice and manner again asserting itself.  “I put myself at your service, Madame, and danger disappears!  I am as God to-night with powers of life and death!  You do not understand me?  Presently you shall.  But you are ready.  We will go then.  Out of the way, fellow!” he thundered, advancing upon the door.

But Mirepoix, who had placed himself with his back to it, to my astonishment did not give way.  His full bourgeois face was pale; yet peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution.  And oddly—­very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a prisoner, he must be in the wrong—­I sympathised with him.  Low-bred trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with him, when he said firmly: 

“She shall not go!”

“I say she shall!” the priest shrieked, losing all control over himself.  “Fool!  Madman!  You know not what you do!” As the words passed his lips, he made an adroit forward movement, surprised the other, clutched him by the arms, and with a strength I should never have thought lay in his meagre frame, flung him some paces into the room.  “Fool!” he hissed, shaking his crooked fingers at him in malignant triumph.  “There is no man in Paris, do you hear—­or woman either—­shall thwart me to-night!”

“Is that so?  Indeed?”

The words, and the cold, cynical voice, were not those of Mirepoix; they came from behind.  The priest wheeled round, as if he had been stabbed in the back.  I clutched Croisette, and arrested the cramped limb I was moving under cover of the noise.  The speaker was Bezers!  He stood in the open door-way, his great form filling it from post to post, the old gibing smile on his face.  We had been so taken up, actors and audience alike, with the altercation, that no one had heard him ascend the stairs.  He still wore the black and silver suit, but it was half hidden now under a dark riding cloak which just disclosed the glitter of his weapons.  He was booted and spurred and gloved as for a journey.

“Is that so?” he repeated mockingly, as his gaze rested in turn on each of the four, and then travelled sharply round the room.  “So you will not be thwarted by any man in Paris, to-night, eh?  Have you considered, my dear Coadjutor, what a large number of people there are in Paris?  It would amuse me very greatly now—­ and I’m sure it would the ladies too, who must pardon my abrupt entrance—­to see you put to the test; pitted against—­shall we say the Duke of Anjou?  Or M. de Guise, our great man?  Or the Admiral?  Say the Admiral foot to foot?”