"The Rue des Lombards?"
"Yes, why not?" But though the soldier still smiled, the lines of his mouth hardened suddenly. "Why not to the Rue des Lombards?"
"I know no reason why you should not be going there," the clerk replied boldly. "It was only that the street is near; and a friend of my late master's lives in it."
"His name?"
The clerk started; the question was put so abruptly, and in a tone so imperious, it struck him as it were a blow. "Nicholas Toussaint," he answered involuntarily.
"Ay?" replied the other, raising his hand to his chin and glancing at Adrian with a look that for all the world reminded him of an old print of the eleventh Louis, which hung in a room at the Hotel de Ville—so keen and astute was it. "Your master, young man, was of the moderate party—a Politique?"
"He was."
"A good man and a Catholic? one who loved France? A Leaguer only in name?" the other 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? That is all so, is it not?"