'And you are playing with me,' he cried, looking at me suddenly, with so piercing a gaze and so dark a countenance that I checked a shudder with difficulty. 'So much the worse for you, so much the worse for you!' he continued fiercely. 'I am here to buy the information you hold, but if you will not sell, there is another way. At an hour's notice I can ruin your plans, and send you to a dungeon! You are like a fish caught in a net not yet drawn. It thrusts its nose this way and that, and touches the mesh, but is slow to take the alarm until the net is drawn--and then it is too late. So it is with you, and so it is,' he added, falling into the ecstatic mood which marked him at times, and left me in doubt whether he were all knave or in part enthusiast, 'with all those who set themselves against St. Peter and his Church!'
'I have heard you say much the same of the King of France,' I said derisively.
'You trust in him?' he retorted, his eyes gleaming. 'You have been up there, and seen his crowded chamber, and counted his forty-five gentlemen and his grey-coated Swiss? I tell you the splendour you saw was a dream, and will vanish as a dream. The man's strength and his glory shall go from him, and that soon. Have you no eyes to see that he is beside the question? There are but two powers in France--the Holy Union, which still prevails, and the accursed Huguenot; and between them is the battle.'
'Now you are telling me more,' I said.
He grew sober in a moment, looking at me with a vicious anger hard to describe.
'Tut tut,' he said, showing his yellow teeth, 'the dead tell no tales. And for Henry of Valois, he so loves a monk that you might better accuse his mistress. But for you, I have only to cry "Ho! a Huguenot and a spy!" and though he loved you more than he loved Quélus or Maugiron, he dare not stretch out a finger to save you!'
I knew that he spoke the truth, and with difficulty maintained the air of indifference with which I had entered on the interview.
'But what if I leave Blois?' I ventured, merely to see what he would say.
He laughed. 'You cannot,' he answered. 'The net is round you, M. de Marsac, and there are those at every gate who know you and have their instructions. I can destroy you, but I would fain have your information, and for that I will pay you five hundred crowns and let you go.'
'To fall into the hands of the King of Navarre?'