“I do not take your meaning, monsieur,” he said dryly, “I am not much of a diplomat.”
I smiled. “No, I think not,” I replied, “and you may have need to be one. The path on which an emperor treads is too slippery for other men.”
He understood me, and his face flushed.
“There can be no open path which an honest man can fear to tread,” he said haughtily.
“No,” I acknowledged calmly, “fear is not the word; but royalty gives no elbow-room, monsieur.”
He shut his teeth, and I saw his hand playing with the hilt of his sword.
“No man,” he said slowly, “crowned or uncrowned, shall ever thrust me aside unjustly without a struggle.”
“You are a young man, M. de Lambert,” I said quietly; “be warned. The dangers that would assail you would not be half so serious as those which would encompass one—whom we know.”
He started perceptibly. We took a few steps more and then he stopped me. We had turned aside from the Red Place into a narrow lane; on either hand were the blank walls of the courtyards of two houses. I can see his face to-day as plainly as then, when it stood out in such relief against the background of stone. He was pale, and his brows were bent over his troubled eyes, while a lock of his own light brown hair had escaped from beneath his peruke and was blown across his cheek.
“M. de Vicomte,” he said in a low voice, “have you been warned of any danger threatening Mademoiselle Zotof?”