“Yes, and so will you in a minute. Be reasonable, and do as I tell you. Go and see if the angel be not in the next room.”
“But if he speak again?”
“Well, I am here to answer. He is vastly credulous. For the last quarter of an hour I have been talking, and he has not recognized me. It is not clever!”
Henri frowned. “I begin to believe you are right, Chicot,” said he.
“Go, then.”
Henri opened softly the door which led into the corridor. He had scarcely entered it, when he heard the voice redoubling its reproaches, and Chicot replying.
“Yes,” said the voice, “you are as inconstant as a woman, as soft as a Sybarite, as irreligious as a heathen.”
“Oh!” whined Chicot, “is it my fault if I have such a soft skin—such white hands—such a changeable mind? But from to-day I will alter—I will wear coarse linen——”
However, as Henri advanced, he found that Chicot’s voice grew fainter, and the other louder, and that it seemed to come from St. Luc’s room, in which he could see a light. He stooped down and peeped through the keyhole, and immediately grew pale with anger.
“Par la mordieu!” murmured he, “is it possible that they have dared to play such a trick?”