On the whole, the scholar, forgetting that cowards are ever liars, saw no reason to doubt Louis' story. It did but add one more to the motives he had for action: immediate, decisive, striking action, if he would save his neck, if he would succeed in his plans. That the Syndic alone stood between him and arrest, that by the Syndic alone he lived, he had learned at a meeting at which he had been present the previous night at the Grand Duke's country house four leagues distant. D'Albigny had been there, and Brunaulieu, Captain of the Grand Duke's Guards, and Father Alexander, who dreamed of the Episcopate of Geneva, and others—the chiefs of the plot, his patrons. To his mortification they had been able to tell him things he had not learned, though he was within the city, and they without. Among others, that the Council had certain knowledge of him and his plans, and but for the urgency of Blondel would have arrested him a fortnight before.
His companions at the midnight supper had detected his dismay, and had derided him, thinking that with that there was an end of the mysterious scheme which he had refused to impart. They fancied that he would not return to the city, or venture his head a second time within the lion's jaws. But they reckoned without their man, Basterga with all his faults was brave; and he had failed in too many schemes to resign this one lightly.
"Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinæ,"
he murmured; and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here. Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung were not to snap untimely.
Blondel! He lived by Blondel. And Blondel—why had he left the bridge in that strange fashion? Abruptly, desperately, as if something had befallen him. Why? He must learn, and that quickly.
CHAPTER XVI.
A GLOVE AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in great disgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered the huddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left the glittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; and most distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frosty sunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might have been a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, might have been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Anne stood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel and Louis, these manœuvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of a conspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They had made a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will and pleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absence they might work—Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he would know, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice.
His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whom he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he countered with hot defiant glances—he included them in his anathema. He extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the rest. They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms, insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection. All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his eyes to the mountains.