"Ha!" exclaimed the druggist, almost starting from his seat; "how knew you that I hated him?--at least, before this last dark deed?"
"Because," replied Maillotin du Bac, "some ten years ago, when the people of Ghent were pressing boldly round the duke, and shouting for their privileges, I saw this Imbercourt give a contemptuous buffet to a man who had caught him by the robe. Do you remember such a thing? The man was a rich druggist of Ghent; and in his first fury he got a knife half way out of his bosom--not unlike that which lies in your own, Master Ganay; but a moment after he put it up again, as he saw the duke's horsemen riding down; and, with a smooth face and pleasant smile, said to the man who had struck him, 'We shall meet again, fair sir.'"
"Ay, and we have met again: but how? but how?" cried the druggist, grasping the arm of the Prevot tight as he spoke; "how have we met again? Not as it should have been--for vengeance on the insolent oppressor: no; but to go upon my knees before him, to humble myself to the very dust, to drop my tears at his feet, to beseech him to spare my child's life."
"And he spurned you away from him, of course?" replied Maillotin du Bac, eagerly.
"No, no," answered the druggist; "no, no, he did not spurn me, but he did worse; he pretended to pity me. He declared that what I asked was not in his power, that he had not pronounced the sentence, that it was the eschevins of the city, and that he had no right nor authority to reverse the judgment. Oh! that I should have been the cursed idiot to have humbled myself before him--to be pitied, to be commiserated by him whose buffet was still burning on my cheek--to be called, poor man! unhappy father!--to be prayed to take some wine, as if I had not the wherewithal to buy it for myself. Out upon them all! Eternal curses light upon their heads, and sink them all to hell!" and as he spoke, the unhappy man gave way to one of those fearful fits of wrath which had divided his moments during the whole of that day, with grief as bitter and unavailing.
Maillotin du Bac let the first gust of passion have its way, with that sort of calm indifferent management of the other's grief which showed how familiar his ruthless office had rendered him with every expression of human misery and despair. "Ay," he said, after the tempest had in some degree passed, "it was just like him; a cold calculating person enough he is, and was, and always will be! Much should I like to hear, though, how it happened that he had no power to grant pardon. Did not the princess give him full authority when he went?
"He said not! he said not!" cried the druggist, eagerly; "and if he lied, with a father's tears dewing his feet, a father's agony before his eyes, he has purchased a place for himself as deep as Judas in the fiery abyss--if there be such a place, at least, as monks would have as believe: would it were true, for his sake!"
"But why did you not pray him," demanded the Prevot, "to stay the execution till the return of the princess herself? She would have granted you an easy pardon, and your boy's life might have been saved."
"I did, I did," replied the unhappy father; "I did pray--I did beseech for a day--for an hour; but he would not listen to me. He said that the circumstances of the case would not justify such an action; that the proofs were clear and undoubted; that he--he, my poor luckless boy--had committed an offence heinous in the eyes of God and man; that he had outraged a defenceless woman, and slain a fellow-creature to escape from the punishment of the crime he had committed! Oh! may the time come, that he himself may plead for mercy to ears as deaf and inexorable! Mark me, Sir Prevot, mark me! men say lightly that they would give a right hand for some trifling nothing that they covet in this world: some rare jewel, or some painted hood, or some prancing horse; but I would lay down both these old hands, and bid the hangman strike them off, aye, with a smile, for but one hour of sweet revenge."
"If such be the case--" replied Maillotin du Bac, in his usual common-place tone.