"Monsieur," Baville replied, "it is the same thing. And, sir, I welcome you to Languedoc, you, a member of a great family which has stood ever by the throne, the Church. I hope you will make my house--it is at Montpellier--your resting place while you remain in the Midi. You will be very welcome."
"I thank your Excellency, but it is impossible I should accept. You will remember I told you I have a mission here--one that I can not put aside even amid the troublous times which have now arisen in the neighbourhood. I must prosecute my mission to the end."
"To find the lost man you spoke of?"
"To find him."
"Is he a de Rochebazon? If so, he should be very near to a great inheritance--an inheritance which, the Franciscan tells me (the monk who recognised you as the gentleman who attended the last moments of Madame la Princesse), the Church has fallen heir to."
"The monk! What monk? Yet--I remember. There were two at her bedside: one who watched continuously, another who came at the last moment. Which is he?"
"I can not say. Yet I will bring you into intercourse with him if you desire it. He is here to assist in stamping out this accursed Protestantism, in helping to convert them to the true faith."
"Your Excellency hates bitterly these Protestants."
"I hate the king's enemies. And all Protestants are such."
As the Intendant uttered these words Martin told himself the time had come. He must speak now or be henceforth a coward in his own esteem. It was for nothing that his father had cast off forever his allegiance to James, had openly acknowledged that henceforth he abjured the religion to which James belonged. Not for nothing, since by so doing he had stood his trial before Sir Francis Wytham and Sir Creswell Levinz, narrowly escaping Jeffreys himself. Not for nothing, since he had been fined and imprisoned, he who had followed the Stuarts into exile, almost ruined.