‘So!’ he said as he entered, ‘so, fellow, I have not hindered your gains, and you have been true to your agreement?’
‘Illustrissimo, yes. The pool of vision mirrored the flames, but nothing beyond—nothing—nothing.’
‘They asked you then no more of those words you threw out of Esperance?’
‘Only the English youth, sir; and there were plenty of other hopes to dance before the eyes of such a lad! With M. le Baron it will be needful to be more guarded.’
‘M. le Baron shall not have the opportunity,’ said the Chevalier. ‘He may abide by his decision, and what the younger one may tell him. Fear not, good man, it shall be made good to you, if you obey my commands. I have other work for you. But first repeat to me more fully what you told me before. Where was it that you saw this unhappy girl under the name of Esperance?’
‘At a hostel, sir, at Charente, where she was attending on an old heretic teacher of the name of Gardon, who had fallen sick there, being pinched by the fiend with rheumatic pains after his deserts. She bore the name of Esperance Gardon, and passed for his son’s widow.’
‘And by what means did you know her not to be the mean creature she pretended?’ said the Chevalier, with a gesture of scornful horror.
‘Illustrissimo, I never forget a face. I had seen this lady with M. le Baron when they made purchases of various trinkets at Montpipeau; and I saw her full again. I had the honour to purchase from her certain jewels, that the Eccellenza will probably redeem; and even—pardon, sir—I cut off and bought of her, her hair.’
‘Her hair!’ exclaimed the Chevalier, in horror. ‘The miserable girl to have fallen so low! Is it with you, fellow?’
‘Surely, Illustrissimo. Such tresses—so shining, so silky, so well kept,—I reserved to adorn the heads of Signor Renato’s most princely customers’, said the man, unpacking from the inmost recesses of one of his most ingeniously arranged packages, a parcel which contained the rich mass of beautiful black tresses. ‘Ah! her head looked so noble,’ he added, ‘that I felt it profane to let my scissors touch those locks; but she said that she could never wear them openly more, and that they did but take up her time, and were useless to her child and her father—as she called him; and she much needed the medicaments for the old man that I gave her in exchange.’