"Then you fear nothing," he said. "We shall soon see how you will bear your fate."
"Very probably, your highness," I replied, "as other men bear theirs; though, as to fear, I am as free from it as your highness."
Among the officers who stood behind the duke, two made me a sign at this moment. The Duke of Montpensier pointed to the door through which Stuart had just passed, then lifted his hand as if to beseech me to be silent. Martigue, though evidently friendly towards me, knit his brows and shook his fist at me. But the Duke of Anjou, after gazing on me for a moment, exclaimed, "What babblers and braggarts these Huguenots are! Take the Maheutre out, and hang him to one of the spouts of the castle!"
"I beg your highness's pardon," said Martigue, advancing with a frank and somewhat jocular air: "You will recollect he is my prisoner; and, before you hang him, you must pay me fifteen hundred crowns for his ransom."
"Oh, I will pay you, I will pay you, Martigue," said the prince.
"I will give no credit," replied Martigue, in the same tone. "Down upon the table, my lord, or you don't have him! A hanged man is no good to me, and, I should think, none to your highness either."
"I should think not indeed," said one of the gentlemen who stood behind: "besides, my lord, I really do not know anything that Monsieur de Cerons has done, either against your highness or his majesty's service which should excite your indignation against him: besides, he is a knight, my lord.
"Has he not done plenty?" exclaimed the duke, still maintaining his anger, although he had smiled upon Martigue. "A knight! Haven't I heard that he is a mere marauder, cutting off our parties, stealing into our camp as a spy, setting fire to villages? I say, is he not a mere marauder?"
Perhaps the love of existence had grown upon me as I heard the question of life and death discussed; and, at all events, I had a very strong objection to hanging from one of the spouts of Jarnac. The duke looked towards me as he asked the last time if I were not a marauder, and I replied, "Your highness has been greatly misinformed. I am no marauder, but acting under a commission from the princes of the Protestant league. Neither can it ever be said of me, sir, or of one single man under my command, that we have ever sacked or pillaged a Catholic house, that we have ever drawn the sword against any unarmed man, or that I have demanded one shilling of contribution from any village in which I lodged. The bare walls of the house in which I was quartered was all that I ever demanded; and my purse has ever been ready to pay for everything that I took."
"That is more than his highness, or any one else here can say," cried Martigue; and the duke himself burst into a loud laugh.