So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:
"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love of my affectionate uncle?"
"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you say."
"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at Ivry."
"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."
"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.
"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward, Lorance de Montluc."
"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar again."
"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your brother Charles, either."
"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise you mean."