"They will be here; it is hardly eight."
"Mayneville, my poor brother asks for his surgeon; the best surgeon, the best cure for his wound, will be a lock of the Valois's shaved head, and the man who should carry him that present, Mayneville, would be sure to be welcome."
"In two hours, madame, that man shall set out to find our dear duke in his retreat; he who went out of Paris as a fugitive shall return triumphantly."
"One word more, Mayneville; are our friends in Paris warned?"
"What friends?"—"The leaguers."
"Heaven forbid, madame; to tell a bourgeois is to tell all Paris. Once the deed is done, and the prisoner safe in the cloister, we can defend ourselves against an army. Then we should risk nothing by crying from the roof of the convent, 'We have the Valois!'"
"You are both skillful and prudent, Mayneville. Do you know, though, that my responsibility is great, and that no woman will ever have conceived and executed such a project?"
"I know it, madame; therefore I counsel you in trembling."
"The monks will be armed under their robes?"
"Yes."