“What will follow now?” he asked himself.
He knew at once, for there was a slight cough, a heavy step, and the King strode through the dividing door into the chamber, stopped as if looking round for a moment, and then stepped round to the side of the great canopied bed, drew forward a chair, and seated himself between the recumbent prisoner and the window. Then he coughed again, but sharply and angrily this time.
“You hear me, Comte de la Seine?” he said haughtily.
It seemed to come naturally to the young esquire how to play his part—to gain all the time he could; and he slowly raised one hand and let it fall heavily back upon the coverlet.
Henry was satisfied, and his tones bespoke it, as he said:
“It is well, sir. I have stooped to pay you this visit—here this night, to remind you that by the way in which you have repaid my hospitality you have forfeited your life.”
Denis raised his hand again, so that it came out of the shadow thrown by the curtains into the light cast by the candles right across the bed; and as the King sat there as if watching the effect of his words, the hand was waved carelessly in the air before it was allowed to descend.
“Hah!” cried the King. “You are a Frenchman, sir, and you behave with all the flippancy of your race. I understand your gesture. It means recklessness. You, so to speak, tell me that you do not value your life. You defy me. But you will alter your tone when you are called upon to march in the middle of my guards to the headsman’s block, and suffer there for your crime.”
There was a quick impatient gesture of the hand again.
“We shall see,” continued the King, with his voice growing deeper, suggestive of the hot anger that was burning in his breast. “And now listen to me, M. le Comte de la Seine, as you call yourself. But you have not deceived me. I know everything, even to the reason why you have stooped to play the part of a common cutpurse.”