"The doctors think this mad exposure means his certain death, your Excellency."
"Death! H'm! He'll take good care to stay alive till we're all involved. It's too late for him to die."
The other raised his brows but made no answer.
"Have an absinthe, Mouquin?"
Without noticing that Mouquin shook his head Ronsard leaned over heavily and poured a little of the liquid into a glass, filling it up with water. Without drinking, he stared as if he saw a vision in its milky depths.
"Just a chance—the air is thick with plots—Pierre might be feigning—the Princess Haganè—who knows?—perhaps connives, betrays—Pshaw!" Count Ronsard dreamed under his breath.
"No further orders, your Excellency?" asked the younger man, patiently, his hand on the door.
"No—yes! Bring me the first news of that wandering lunatic—and avoid the police!"
The words fell before a fury of feet that bowled down the outer corridor. The door burst open, nearly flinging Mouquin to the floor. Pierre Le Beau reeled in, crimson, panting, wild-eyed, hatless, and waved at the startled minister a large paper sealed with a red seal, round and clear as a Japanese sun. Ronsard in the millionth part of an instant recalled himself. He sat erect, but his eye gleamed beady and keen as a rat's. He was holding back with impartial judgment a riotous flush of hope. But Mouquin, as if hypnotized, locked the door and backed up against it. Pierre's eyes caught the cloudy green of the absinthe, still standing in the minister's glass. He tottered toward it, tried to speak, but merely pointed in jerks with his free hand. Ronsard silently held out the glass and motioned to an empty chair. Pierre drained the drug standing, then fell rather than sat. A sweat sprang suddenly to his skin. The fair hair plastered itself in little brown sickles on his white forehead.