“Ah! it is you, M. Foulon,” replied the same voice, “I want my jester, who is in one of your cells. I want Chicot, I am ennuyé at the Louvre.”
“And I have been much amused, my son,” said Chicot, throwing off his hood, and pushing his way through the crowd of monks, who recoiled, with a cry of terror.
At this moment the Duc de Guise, advancing to a lamp, read the signature obtained with so much labor. It was “Chicot I.”
“Chicot!” cried he; “thousand devils!”
“Let us fly!” said the cardinal, “we are lost.”
“Ah!” cried Chicot, turning to Gorenflot, who was nearly fainting, and he began to strike him with the cord he had round his waist.
CHAPTER LXXXIX.
INTEREST AND CAPITAL.
As the king spoke and the conspirators listened, they passed from astonishment to terror. Chicot I. relinquished his role of apparent terror, threw back his hood, crossed his arms, and, while Gorenflot fled at his utmost speed, sustained, firm and smiling, the first shock. It was a terrible moment, for the gentlemen, furious at the mystification of which they had been the dupes, advanced menacingly on the Gascon. But this unarmed man, his breast covered only by his arms—this laughing face, stopped them still more than the remonstrance of the cardinal, who said to them that Chicot’s death could serve no end, but, on the contrary, would be terribly avenged by the king, who was the jester’s accomplice in this scene of terrible buffoonery.