"Why, don't you know?" exclaimed the old man. "On my life, I believe the duke is as mad as his brother."
"The fact is, my son," said the friar, "some offense was committed here last night, a robbery or a murder; and the duke has given orders that every body who was at the house after the hour of seven should be detained till the matter is investigated."
"He does not suppose I committed a murder!" exclaimed the old soldier, in a tone of great indignation.
"I can't tell that," replied the friar, with a quiet smile; "gentlemen of your profession sometimes do."
"I never murdered any body in my life," whined the mechanic.
"Happy for you," said the friar; "and happier still if you get people to believe you."
He then addressed himself to his beads again, and for nearly an hour all was silence in the room, except the low muttering of the friar's paters and aves. But the gay hopes of Jean Charost sunk a good deal under the influence of delay and uncertainty, although, of course, he felt nothing like alarm at the situation in which he was placed. At length a man in a black gown and a square black cap was introduced, struggling, it is true, and saying to those who pushed him in, "Mark, I resist! it is not with my own consent. This incarceration is illegal. The duke is not a lord high justiciary on this ground; and for every minute I will have my damages, if there be honesty in the sovereign courts, and justice in France."
The door was closed upon him, however, unceremoniously; for the servants of great men in those days were not very much accustomed to attend to punctilios of law; and the advocate, for so he seemed, turned to his fellow-prisoners, and told them in indignant terms how he had been engaged to defend the steward of the prince in a little piece of scandal that had arisen in the Marais; how he had visited him to consult the night before, and had been seized on his return that day, and thrust in there upon a pretense that would not bear an argument.
"I thought," said the old soldier, bitterly, "that you men of the robe would make any thing bear an argument. I know you argued me out of all my fortune among you."
The little petulant man of law had not time to reply, when the door was opened, and the whole party were marched into the presence of the Duke of Orleans, under the escort of half a dozen men-at-arms.