‘You have been playing a deep game; and this time Fortune favours you. But you took her as the discarded mistress of many others; and she will in turn jilt you.’
‘Say rather we have both struggled for her, and you lost her by your own incautious proceedings,’ replied Sainte-Croix. ‘We were both at the brink of a gulf, on a frail precipice, where the fall of one was necessary to the safety of the other. You are now my victim; to-morrow I might have been yours.’
‘And whence comes the lettre de cachet?’
‘From those who have the power to give it. Had you been more guarded in your speech on the carrefour to-day, you might have again practised on the credulity of the dupes that surrounded you.’
‘For what term is my imprisonment?’
‘During the pleasure of the Minister of Police; and that may depend upon mine. Our secrets are too terrible for both to be free at once. You should not have let me know that you thought me in your power.’
‘Has every notion of honour departed from you?’ asked Exili.
‘Honour!’ replied Sainte-Croix, with a short contemptuous laugh; ‘honour! and between such as we have become! How could you expect honour to influence me, when we have so long despised it—when it is but a bubble name with the petty gamesters of the world—the watchword of cowardice fearing detection?’
There was a halt in the progress of the carriage as it now arrived at the outer gate of the Bastille. Then came the challenge and the answer; the creaking of the chains that let down the huge drawbridge upon the edge of the outer court; and the hollow rumbling of the wheels over its timber. It stopped at the inner portal; and when the doors were opened, the governor waited at the carriage to receive the new prisoner.
But few words were exchanged. The signature of the lettre de cachet once recognised was all that was required, and Exili was ordered to descend. He turned to Sainte-Croix as he was about to enter the gate, and with a withering expression of revenge and baffled anger, exclaimed—