“That I gave them!”
“Doubtless; on the day when your highness was arrested you received a letter from M. de Guise, and replied to it verbally, through me, that they were to come to Paris from the thirty-first of May to the second of June. It is now the thirty-first of May, and if your highness has forgotten them, they have not forgotten you.”
François grew pale. So many events had passed since, that he had forgotten the rendezvous. “It is true,” said he, at length, “but the relations which then existed between us exist no longer.”
“If that be so, monseigneur, you would do well to tell them, for I believe they think differently.”
“How so?”
“You, perhaps, think yourself free as regards them, but they feel bound to you.”
“A snare, my dear comte, in which a man does not let himself be taken twice.”
“And where was monseigneur taken in a snare?”
“Where? at the Louvre, mordieu.”
“Was it the fault of MM. de Guise?”