The matter passed off, and Marcilly went on, explaining his plan to the end. When he had finished, Condé, who had said no word since that untoward interruption of his, leaned back in his chair, tugging at his moustache. We had expected him to say something, but not a word did he utter, not even a phrase that was suggestive of thanks for the sacrifice that was being made; and at last it was with a voice that almost trembled with anger that I asked:
“Monseigneur approves of the plan, I trust?”
“It is impracticable,” he said shortly. “Come, let us go on with the cards.”
We looked at one another in astonishment. “Does not Your Highness intend to make any effort?” I went on. “And how is this impracticable? We at least deserve to be told that.”
He had picked up an ace of hearts, and was looking at it as I spoke. When I finished, he laid it down face upward on the table, and looked at us.
“Messieurs,” he said gravely, “it is impracticable because, for such a plan to succeed, Louis of Bourbon must be base enough to buy his life at the expense of another’s—and—he has not yet come to that. Messieurs, if this were the only way, and I had to die ten times over, I would not take it. Let there be an end to this. Your very offer is an insult to me.”
To say that we were thunderstruck is nothing. Here was an aspect of the case that had never presented itself to us. We looked at each other blankly, and as we looked the gong in the courtyard struck the half-hour after eleven.
There are moments when a lie becomes almost sublime, and one of those moments had come.
“Monseigneur,” said Marcilly, “you are under a misapprehension. My safety is assured in any case—it is pledged.”
I turned to him; but the expression on his face stilled the inquiry on my lips, and I waited and wondered, while the Prince said dryly, with that touch of sarcasm in his words, from which he could never divest himself: