"Provided that he abjure. But these people of whom you speak are all France."
"Just so. These are my troops as a leaguer; now add, and compare."
"You are joking, are you not, Chicot?"
"Is it a time to joke, when you are alone, against all the world?"
Henri assumed an air of royal dignity. "Alone I am," said he, "but at the same time I alone command. You show me an army, but where is the chief? You will say, M. de Guise; but do I not keep him at Nancy? M. de Mayenne, you say yourself, is at Soissons, the Duc d'Anjou is at Brussels, and the king of Navarre at Pau; so that if I am alone, I am free. I am like a hunter in the midst of a plain, waiting to see his prey come within his reach."
"On the contrary; you are the game whom the hunters track to his lair."
"Chicot!"
"Well! let me hear whom you have seen come."
"No one."
"Yet some one has come."