To them Jean-aux-Choux opened his mouth.
"He is dead!" he announced, solemnly—"Henry of Valois is dead! The siege of Paris is raised. Epernon and the great lords have refused to serve a Huguenot king. They have gone home——"
"And the Bearnais—the Bearnais?" interrupted Mariana hoarsely, "what of him?"
"I saw him ride sadly away—the White Scarves only following!"
Then for once, at the crowning moment of his life, Mariana, the smiling Jesuit, leaned face-forward on the table. His strength had gone from him.
"Enough," he said, "I have done the Society's will. But so great success even I had not hoped for!"
And he rocked himself to and fro in that terrible crisis of nervous emotion which comes only to the most self-restrained, while Teruel, the Surintendant of the Holy Inquisition, and Frey Tullio his second, were prodigal of their cares, lavishing restoratives, of which (in virtue of their office) they had great store in the Street of the Money.
None minded Jean-aux-Choux, or even thanked him. But he, seeing a parchment with a familiar name written upon it, the ink scarcely dry, and as a paper-weight the seal of the Holy Office ready to append to it, coolly pocketed both seal and mandate.
It was a warrant to the familiars of the Holy Office in the city of Perpignan to seize the body of one Claire Agnew, a known and warrantable heretic, presently residing at the house of La Massane near Collioure, and to bring her within the prisons of the aforesaid Inquisition in the Street of the Money, in the city above mentioned, within ten days at most from that date—upon peril of their several lives, and of the lives of all that should defend, aid, assist, or shelter the said Claire Agnew, heretic, daughter of François of that name, plotter, spy, and Calvinist.
Followed the signs and signatures of the two inquisitors in charge—to wit, Teruel and Tullio. The name of Mariana did not anywhere appear.