Chapter Forty Two.
In the gloomy gallery.
Leoni was the moving spirit of the adventure of what he felt to be another daring attempt to escape; for Francis, under the influence of the medicament that he had administered, was like a puppet in his hands; while Saint Simon, big, manly, and strong, ready to draw and attack any who should bar their way, spoke no word, but followed his leader’s every gesture watchfully, suggesting nothing, doing nothing save that exactly which he was told.
As they stood outside the door and began to move along the corridor, the place looked so lonely and the task so ridiculously easy, that the scheming, subtle doctor’s heart smote him with a feeling of remorse.
It seemed to be so cruel, so cowardly, to escape and leave that brave lad, who was ready to sacrifice his life in his master’s service, alone there with his despair, waiting for the discovery that would probably end with his death.
“Pish!” said Leoni to himself. “What is the boy to me? Nothing more than a pawn upon the chessboard of life, one of the pieces I am using for the sake of France—France, my country, for which I have ventured this. For what is this gay butterfly? King? Yes, the King upon the chessboard, whom it is my fate to move; and where I place him, there he stays. It is I, I in my calm, grave, unobtrusive way, who am the real King of France—now nearly at the pinnacle of my ambition, or shall be when I have achieved these last moves. And yet I am not happy. It jars upon me cruelly that I should have to leave this boy. Pooh! Absurd! I will not think about him,” he muttered; and then with a silent mocking laugh, “And yet what is he? Only, as I say, a pawn, which the necessities of the position force me to sacrifice.”
These thoughts flashed like lightning through his brain, as, grasping the King’s arm with one hand, he waved the other in the air as if in the act of casting all these thoughts behind him. But he winced the more, for the thought of Denis alone there in the King’s chamber clung to him and seemed to press him down.
But there was stern work awaiting him, for he would not, he could not believe that their escape could be as easy as it seemed. The corridor leading to the great gallery near the King’s apartment appeared perfectly deserted; neither guard nor gentleman in attendance seemed at hand to hinder their approach to the arras which hid the secret door. But he did not believe and he would not trust so impossible a state of things.
Stopping suddenly close up to the panelled wall, he signed to Saint Simon to close up.