The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering nervously the papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence, when now he stepped forward and said:
"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur—"
Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.
"Félix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a bad plan. No man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You are either my loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the other. Now I am loath to hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to hurt you. I give you one more chance to be honest. Go and think it over. If in half an hour you have decided that you are my true man, well and good. If not, by St. Quentin, we will see what a flogging can do!"
VIII
Charles-André-Étienne-Marie.
npleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom. Those men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's iron ways, said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.
The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned to the inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the page burst out: