“End it,” I said thickly, but he laughed.
“There is yet time for another bout.” He stooped and picked up my sword, saying as he held it out to me, “I will say that there are scarcely three men in France who could have met that thrust—take your sword, monsieur.”
Consider for a moment in what state I was. I was half mad with the tension of the past days. I had meant to kill this man when I came here; to kill him for a few trifling words; and in my heart I felt I was doing him honor to let him die by the sword of Vibrac. And what was the result? I found myself, for all my vaunted skill, a child in his hands; and he, the despised soldier of fortune, the man on whose fame there were a hundred blots, stood here giving me my life, and, what is more, giving me a lesson in perfect knighthood.
I could not speak. My hand closed like a vise on the hilt of the sword Richelieu held out to me; but the cold steel itself was warm to my icy clutch. I stood before him, a curse trembling upon my lips and a hundred evil passions hissing like snakes at my heart. Richelieu did not understand. He spurred me with a gibe.
“Come, monsieur! Or are we to have a new phrase instead of the Fever of St. Vallière?”
I was stung to the quick. “You shall die for this,” I gasped, and he laughed once more as our blades crossed, and then—a dark shadow fell between us, and a stern voice cried:
“Hold! What fool’s work is this?”
We turned to the sound, and before us stood Achon, his face gleaming like ivory above his black robes; but it was not he who arrested our attention, whose look froze the words of defiance upon our lips. It was that other figure, a little behind the priest, taller by a head than any of us, with a purple scar on his cheek, and a sombre fury burning in the eyes, that held us spellbound with their power. His was the voice that had arrested us in our devil’s work. He it was upon whom we gazed. Ay! I have known brave men, men to whom death was nothing, men who played with life as a child with a ball, yet never one so hardy as to stand without flinching before The Guise in his wrath.
“The Guise!” stammered Richelieu; but I said nothing, looking at the sinister figures before me. And at Richelieu’s voice a grim smile passed over the duke’s face.
“Messieurs,” he said, “your memories are short. Have you already forgotten du Charry? Is an edict but a week old to be made waste-paper?”