But I saw no farther.  Pavannes did, and murmured bitterly, “We may say our prayers, we Huguenots.  That is our death-warrant.  To-morrow night there will not be one left in Paris, lad.  Guise has his father’s death to avenge, and these cursed Parisians will do his bidding like the wolves they are!  The Baron de Rosny warned us of this, word for word.  I would to Heaven we had taken his advice!”

“Stay!” I cried—­he was going too fast for me—­“stay!” His monstrous conception, though it marched some way with my own suspicions, outran them far!  I saw no sufficient grounds for it.  “The King—­the king would not permit such a thing, M. de Pavannes,” I argued.

“Boy, you are blind!” he rejoined impatiently, for now he saw all and I nothing.  “Yonder was the Duke of Anjou’s captain—­ Monsieur’s officer, the follower of France’s brother, mark you!  And he—­he obeyed the Duke’s ring!  The Duke has a free hand to-night, and he hates us.  And the river.  Why are we not to cross the river?  The King indeed!  The King has undone us.  He has sold us to his brother and the Guises.  Va chasser L’IDOLE” for the second time I heard the quaint phrase, which I learned afterwards was an anagram of the King’s name, Charles de Valois, used by the Protestants as a password—­“Va chasser L’IDOLE has betrayed us!  I remember the very words he used to the Admiral, ‘Now we have got you here we shall not let you go so easily!’ Oh, the traitor!  The wretched traitor!”

He leaned against the wall overcome by the horror of the conviction which had burst upon him, and unnerved by the imminence of the peril.  At all times he was an unready man, I fancy, more fit, courage apart, for the college than the field; and now he gave way to despair.  Perhaps the thought of his wife unmanned him.  Perhaps the excitement through which he had already gone tended to stupefy him, or the suddenness of the discovery.

At any rate, I was the first to gather my wits together, and my earliest impulse was to tear into two parts a white handkerchief I had in my pouch, and fasten one to his sleeve, the other in his hat, in rough imitation of the badges I wore myself.

It will appear from this that I no longer trusted Madame d’O.  I was not convinced, it is true, of her conscious guilt, still I did not trust her entirely.  “Do not wear them on your return,” she had said and that was odd; although I could not yet believe that she was such a siren as Father Pierre had warned us of, telling tales from old poets.  Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did so.  Her companionship with that vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes’ return, her mysterious directions to me, her anxiety to take her sister home—­home, where she would be exposed to danger, as being in a known Huguenot’s house—­ these things pointed to but one conclusion; still that one was so horrible that I would not, even while I doubted and distrusted her, I would not, I could not accept it.  I put it from me, and refused to believe it, although during the rest of that night it kept coming back to me and knocking for admission at my brain.