“Mon Dieu! I recognize it, I shall always recognize it—the house where I suffered! I have never prayed for vengeance on M. de Mayenne, author of my martyrdom, nor on Nicholas David, his instrument. No; Chicot is patient, Chicot can wait, although it is now six years that this debt has been running on, and in seven years the interest is doubled. May, then, my patience last another year, so that instead of fifty blows of a stirrup-leather which I received in this house by the orders of this assassin of a Lorraine prince, and which drew a pint of blood, I may owe a hundred blows and two pints of blood! Amen, so be it!”
“Amen!” said the king.
Chicot then returned to the litter, amidst the wondering looks of the spectators.
“Why, Chicot, what does all this mean?” said the king.
“Sire, it means that Chicot is like the fox—that he licks the stones where his blood fell, until against those very stones he crushes the heads of those who spilt it.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Sire, in that house lived a girl whom Chicot loved, a good and charming creature, and a lady. One evening when he went to see her, a certain prince, who had also fallen in love with her, had him seized and beaten, so that Chicot was forced to jump out of window; and as it was a miracle that he was not killed, each time he passes the house he kneels down and thanks God for his escape.”
“You were, then, well beaten, my poor Chicot?”
“Yes, sire, and yet not as much as I wished.”
“Why—for your sins?”