"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there," Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the heart."
"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for her safe return."
"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."
"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"
"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the way, there is Valère, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses little."
"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"
"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."
I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers. But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his arm-chair.
"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"
"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly, for that?"