"Monsieur, I was wrong—a thousand times wrong. I knew that as soon as I had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath or no oath."
"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile. "Now you are Félix. Who are my would-be murderers?"
We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before, and here we stuck again.
"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten—tell you their names, their whereabouts, everything—were it not for one man who stood my friend."
The duke's eyes flashed.
"You call him that—my assassin!"
"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's assassin—and a perjurer. But—but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back by betraying him?"
"According to your own account, he betrayed you."
"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were your own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the gutter, would you send him to his death?"
"To whom do you owe your first duty?"