"Then?" said La Truaumont.
"Then five hundred Norman gentlemen will subdue the courtiers and seize on him. We shall have him. Hold him."
"Go on!" La Truaumont muttered, his voice husky and deep. "What next? What will you do with him?"
"He will sign a renunciation of his throne or----"
"Or?"
"He will go to the Bastille, or Pignerol--Pignerol is safer; it is afar off, out of, lost to, the world. He will experience that which he has caused countless others to experience. And, later, he will--die."
"Die! How?"
"As others have died," the Jew hissed. "As all die who suffer under his tyranny. By his own hands, or--will--appear--to have done so."
"My horse is in its stall," Humphrey thought to himself now; "my rapier to my hand. It is time, and full time, too, for me to be on my way. On my way to France--thank heaven the frontier is so near at hand! To Paris, to the King. There is no time to lose. The King to be seized and, later, the country invaded; the fortresses taken! And I know all the scheme. All, as well as the names of all concerned."
"Yet," he went on, "I must contain myself longer. To leave this room now, however softly; to attempt to unbar the door of this closed house, if it is yet shut; to saddle 'Soupir' and ride off now is to tell those wretches in there that they are blown upon. I must wait--wait till full night has come, till midnight at earliest, or even until later and, then, off and away. Away through the mountains, over the plains--on--on--till I stand face to face with the King and tell him all. Heaven above be praised, he knows me and my name: he has befriended me and been good to my mother. It will not be hard to do. Oh! that I could creep out now, at once, so as to waste no precious moment."