"Ay, Madam," answered the man; "I have done your will, though it be against my conscience."
"Conscience!" cried Madame de Chazeul; "what have you to do with conscience?--Is it not in a priest's keeping?" she added, seeing an unpleasant shade come over the man's brow; "and can he not give you absolution? This may cost a score more crowns than any other offence. But it is purchasable, and I will pay the money. To kill a Cardinal is a ruinous thing; but it can be absolved on a fair calculation of his weight in gold. These candlesticks of the church can always be replaced; and this is but a trifle. Methinks you will become a Huguenot next, and fancy that the Pope has no power to absolve us. I tell you what, Martin, if such were the case, many a fair lady and gallant gentleman, in France, would be in a perilous case."
"I shall never turn Huguenot, Madam," replied the man gravely; "but, as father Walter said, 'to drag a priest from the altar is more like the act of a heretic than of a Christian man.'"
"Ay, so he said," exclaimed the Marchioness, "because he was the person dragged; but on my honour he would have told a different story, if he had ordered the thing to be done. But you shall have the money. Here, Madelaine, bring me the casket.--Where have you put him?"
The man paused till one of the maids had brought in a small ebony and ivory box, and the Marchioness de Chazeul had counted out into his hand, a hundred small pieces of gold, upon which his fingers clenched with zealous eagerness.
"Where have you put him?" demanded the lady again. "In the sacristy, Madam," replied the servant. But at those words Madame de Chazeul started from her chair like one possessed.
"In the sacristy?" she cried; "then on my soul, he is free by this time! Do you know, that there is a way out through the walls?"
"Yes, Madam," answered Martin; "but that door is locked."
"And that," exclaimed the Marchioness, "through the vestiary and out into the court?"
The man looked confounded, and after a moment's musing he replied, "Ay, that is the way he got out."