"He was."
"A good man and a Catholic? one who loved France? A Leaguer only in name?" he continued with vividness.
"Yes, that is so."
"But his son? He is a Leaguer out and out--one who would rise to fortune on the flood tide of the mob? A Sorbonnist? The priests have got hold of him? He would do to others as they have done to his father? A friend of Le Clerc and Boucher?"
Adrian nodded reluctantly. This strange man confounded and yet fascinated him: this man so reckless and gay one moment, so wary the next: exchanging in an instant the hail of a boon companion for the tone of a noble.
"And is your young master also a friend of this Nicholas Toussaint?" was the next question.
"No," said Adrian, "he has been forbidden the house. M. Toussaint does not approve of his opinions."
"Ha! That is so, is it," rejoined the stranger with his former gayety. "And now enough: where will you lodge me until morning?"
"If my closet will serve you," Felix answered with a hesitation he would not have felt a few minutes before, "it is at your will. I will bring some food there at once, and will let you out if you please at five." And Adrian added some simple directions, by following which his guest might reach the Rue des Lombards without difficulty.
An hour later if the thoughts of those who lay sleepless under that roof could have been traced, some strange contrasts would have appeared. Was Felix Portail thinking of his dead father, or of his sweetheart in the Rue des Lombards, or of his schemes of ambition? Was he blaming the crew of whom until to-day he had been one, or sullenly cursing those factious Huguenots as the root of the mischief? Was Adrian thinking of his kind master, or of his master's daughter? Was the guest dreaming of his narrow escape? or revolving plans beside which Felix's were but the schemes of a rat in a drain? Perhaps Marie alone--for Susanne slept a child's sleep of exhaustion--had her thoughts fixed on him, who so few hours before had been the centre of the household.