"Gone out of Paris?" M. Étienne echoed blankly. To his eagerness it was as if M. le Duc were out of France.
"Aye. He meant to go to-night—Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But when Monsieur learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day. 'If the League must kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight, with all Paris watching.' That's Monsieur!"
At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue Coupejarrets. Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from that unhappy house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices, the equery, struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant hands on Martin the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the household, had had some intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that M. le Comte, if guilty, should be spared. At once he had sounded boots and saddles.
"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the meanest lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet the charge. My father and I have differed but if we are no longer friends we are still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor could he for one moment believe it of me."
I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than to confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.
"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went back a second time and told him."
"And he?" cried M. Étienne.
"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."
"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him he gave no sign."
"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said he could not move in the matter; he could not punish his own kin."