The Marquise wrung her hands in pretty mimicry of despair, and poured out soothing words, as one might pour oil upon stormy waters. The Seneschal sat in stolid silence, a half-scared spectator of this odd scene, what time the Marquise talked and talked until she had brought Fortunio back to some measure of subjection.
Such reasoning as she made use of she climaxed by an offer of no less a sum than a hundred pistoles. The captain licked his lips and pulled at his mustachios. For all his vaunted scorn of being a butcher at a price, now that he heard the price he seemed not half so scornful.
“Tell me again the thing that you need doing and the manner of it,” said he, as one who was moved to reconsider. She told him, and when she had done he made a compromise.
“If I go upon this business, madame, I go not alone.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Marius, “it shall be as you will. Take what men you want with you.”
“And hang with them afterwards, maybe,” he sneered, his insolence returning. “The hundred pistoles would avail me little then. Look you, Monsieur de Condillac, and you, madame, if I go, I’ll need to take with me a better hostage than the whole garrison of this place. I’ll need for shield some one who will see to it that he is not hurt himself, just as I shall see to it that he is hurt before I am.”
“What do you mean? Speak out, Fortunio,” the Marquise bade him.
“I mean, madame, that I will go, not to do this thing, but to stand by and render help if help be needed. Let Monsieur de Condillac go, and I will go with him, and I will undertake to see to it that he returns unhurt and that we leave the other stark.”
Both started, and the Seneschal leaned heavily upon the table. He was not, with all his faults, a man of blood, and this talk of butchery turned him sick and faint.
Vainly now did the Marquise seek to alter the captain’s resolution; but in this she received a sudden check from Marius himself. He cut in upon her arguments to ask the captain: