‘The solution is easy,’ returned Lachaussée. ‘They boasted of favours granted by the great ladies of the court: ’tis a dangerous game to play.’
‘At all events the fall of Urban Grandier was mortal. I have no wish to be roasted alive like him. Hist! I hear some one coming up to our room.’
A mastiff who had been reposing silently at Exili’s feet, having a strange contrivance fastened on to its head, in the manner of a mask, and representing a demon’s face, in order that the vulgar might take it for his familiar spirit, uttered a low growl; and the sound of approaching footsteps, stumbling up the rugged staircase of the house, was plainly audible. The next moment Gaudin de Sainte-Croix knocked at the door, and was admitted to the apartment.
‘Your unguent has marvellous powers of healing,’ he said to Exili, after the first salutations. ‘I am already cured, although the wound had an ugly look.’
‘I could have put the hurt beyond any leech’s skill to cure, by anointing the blade with some pomander of my own make,’ said Exili. ‘It would send such venom through the veins, as soon as it pierced them, that human aid would be of little avail. Your wasp stung you smartly as it was; but you see I cured you.’
‘Unlike the wasp,’ said Sainte-Croix, ‘he still retains his sting about him.’
‘Then render it powerless,’ replied Exili, fixing his eyes steadfastly on him. ‘You can do it: more obnoxious insects than François d’Aubray have fallen by our means. The earth has this day enfolded one in its cold dark shroud—the deed and the victim are hidden together.’
‘A second would excite suspicion,’ replied Gaudin, perceiving the drift of his words.
‘A second and a third and a twentieth might pass away with equal secrecy,’ returned Exili. ‘Look you, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix, when men have played with life and death as we have done, even to the perdition, the utter, hopeless ruin of their souls, in whatever state may follow this short fever of worldly existence,—when the triumph of the hour that passes is all our passions crave, and the purity of that which has gone, the misery of the time which is to come, are alike spurned from consideration and forgotten in the wild and heedless recklessness of the present,—in this position they should have no secrets: all should be in common between them.’
‘I have kept nothing from you,’ said Gaudin.