"Oh, don't say so, Monseigneur!" rejoined Des Avenelles. "I feared I was incurring great risks, and I have hardly dared to breathe since I have known the horrible plans of my two guests. But I have known them only three days,—only three days, I solemnly swear! You should know that I was not present at the Nantes gathering. When the Prince de Condé and the Seigneur de la Renaudie arrived at my house in the early part of this week, I believed myself to be harboring adherents of the Reformed religion, but not conspirators. I have a holy horror of conspirators and conspiracies! They said nothing to me on the subject at first; and it is that for which I am angry with them. Thus to expose to deadly peril, without his knowledge, a poor fellow who had never done them aught but good turns,—that was very wrong. But these great personages never do otherwise."
"What's that?" was Monsieur de Braguelonne's sharp retort,—for he considered himself a very great man indeed.
"I refer to the great personages of the Reformed religion," the advocate made haste to explain. "However, they began by keeping everything from me; but they were whispering together all day long, and writing day and night; visits they received every minute. I watched and listened; in short, I guessed at the beginning of the plot, so that they were obliged to tell me everything,—their meeting at Nantes, their great conspiracy; in fact, all this that you know, and which they thought so carefully concealed. But since that revelation I have not been able to sleep or eat; I have just existed. Every time that anybody came to my house—and God knows how often people have come there!—I would imagine that they had come to carry me before the judges. During the night, in my rare moments of feverish sleep, I dreamed of nothing but courts and scaffolds and executioners, and I would awake bathed in a cold perspiration, to begin again my unceasing attempts to foresee and estimate the risk I was running."
"The risk you were running, did you say?" said Monsieur de Braguelonne. "Why, prison in the first place—"
"And torture in the second," added Démocharès.
"To be followed probably by hanging," said the lieutenant.
"Or the stake, possibly," continued the grand inquisitor.
"The wheel has been known to be used in such cases," the lieutenant put in, as a suitably effective end to the list.
"Imprisoned! tortured! hanged! burned alive! broken on the wheel!" Poor Des Avenelles repeated every word as if he had actually undergone each of the punishments they enumerated.
"Dame! You are an advocate, and should know the law," retorted Monsieur de Braguelonne.