"At your service," said the Count; "whose fellow are you?"
"Alas, I am no one's fellow," was the reply; "this livery is but a disguise bought with my last ducats. Titelmann is after me."
"Are you a heretic?" asked Montigny.
"I am nothing at all, but I played the part of the Cardinal in the rhetoric play, and the bonnet maker where I lodged betrayed me to the Inquisition. But the boy of the house warned me, and I crept out and got this habit, and have been in the streets ever since, and if some great noble will not take me into his house, Titelmann will get me at the last."
"I like your humour," said Brederode instantly, "and all enemies of the Cardinal are friends of mine——"
Montigny checked him and turned to the stranger.
"Fellow," he demanded, "is this tale true, or but some ruse? Answer me truthfully. I am the Stadtholder of Hainault."
"Before God it is true," answered the other earnestly. "And I speak in dread of my life, and with no object but to gain protection. Ever since it has been dark I have been creeping from corner to corner, hoping to find some seigneur——"
"Friend," interrupted Brederode, "I could take you if my house was bigger and my debts less. But Egmont," he added, with his usual admiration of that nobleman, "Egmont will give you shelter—his house is as full of heretics as Geneva itself."
"Then I will hasten to throw myself on the protection of the noble Count," answered the other gratefully. But Montigny, fearing the recklessness both of Brederode and Egmont, was for seizing this stranger who might be anything that he did not say he was—even one of Granvelle's spies—when Adolphus said, "Surely I know his voice, his look——" he dropped the mantle from his face as he spoke, and gazed keenly at the other, who gave a quick exclamation.