"Yes, sire, I know: Lessaix told me."
"You know, and Lessaix told you! You watch me—spy on me, do you?"
"Sire, it is my business to know everything which touches——"
"Yes! and what more do you know? Where did the post come from, you, whose business it is to know everything?"
"Lessaix thought from Paris."
"From Paris," and Louis raised his voice so that the affirmation in it might be clearly heard at the further end of the gallery. Then he turned to the silent group at the doorway, watchful to seize upon any clue to the King's mystery which might guide their feet clear of the pitfalls besetting Valmy.
"Let all men go from me but my friend Argenton," he said, with a wave of the hand which still held the paper crumpled in the grasp. "Let the guard remain beyond the door, but let no man enter till I give leave. Paris! Let them think Paris," he went on, lowering his voice, "but from you, Philip, I have no secrets. We are old friends, too old friends to have secrets one from the other, eh, Philip, eh? Give me your arm that I may lean upon it, for I grow tired. It is the heat, not that I am ill or weaker; the heat, the heat, and I grow tired. And yet I must walk: I cannot rest; no, not for a moment; this—this horror has unstrung me."
CHAPTER II
A LESSON IN OBEDIENCE
Passing his clenched hand through the crook of Commines' arm, and leaning heavily on the stick in the other hand, Louis turned slowly up the gallery, and for a time both were silent. They made a strange contrast. The King was shrunken, bowed, and bent, a veritable walking skeleton to whom the grave already imperiously beckoned nor would take long denial. With his bony head, his listless face, his lean, long neck thrust out from the fur of his upturned collar, he resembled a giant bird of prey. The skinny hand thrust through the crook of Commines' arm, and still grasping the crumpled despatch, was the claw of a vulture. Above him, head and shoulders, towered Commines, square-set, burly, muscular, and as full of life and vigour as his master was sapless. Just midway to the threescore years and ten, his bodily powers were at their highest, and in the ten years he had served Louis his mind had ripened so that few men were more astute, more shrewd to see and seize upon advantages, whether for himself or his master. In the King's service few scruples troubled him, the questionable act was Louis', his part was to obey.