"Thank you?" the magistrate panted. "Thank you?" He stepped back two paces, groping with his hands, as if he sought to support himself by the table from which he had advanced.
"Ay, thank me!"
"No, but I will pay you!" and with the word Blondel snatched from the table a pistol which he had laid within his reach an hour earlier. Before the giant, confident in his size, discovered his danger, the muzzle was at his breast. It was too late to move then—three paces divided the men; but, in his haste to raise the pistol, Blondel had not shaken from it the handkerchief under which he had hidden it, and the lock fell on a morsel of the stuff. The next moment Basterga's huge hand struck aside the useless weapon, and flung Blondel gasping against the wall.
"Fool!" the scholar cried, towering above the baffled, shrinking man whose attempt had placed him at his mercy. "Think you that Cæsar Basterga was born to perish by your hand? That the gods made me what I am, I who carry to-night the fortunes of a nation and the fate of a king, that I might fall by so pitiful a creature as you! Ay, 'tis the alarm-bell, you are right. And by-and-by your friends will be here. It is a wonder," he continued, with a cruel look, "that they are not here already; but perhaps they have enough to fill their hands! And come or stay—if they be like you, poor fool, weak in body as in wit—I care not! I, Cæsar Basterga, this night lord of Geneva, and in the time to come, and thanks to you——"
"Curse you!" Blondel gasped.
"That which I dare be sworn you have dreamt of being!"—the scholar continued with a subtle smile. "The Grand Duke's alter ego, Mayor of the Palace, Adviser to his Highness! Yes, I hit you there? I touch you there! Oh, vanity of little men, I thought so! "He broke off and listened, as sharp on one another two gun-shots rang out at no great distance from the house. A third followed as he hearkened: and on it a swelling wave of sound that rose with each second louder and nearer. "Ay, 'tis known now!" Basterga resumed, in a tone more quiet, but not less confident. "And I must go, my dear friend—who thought a minute ago to speed me for ever. Know that it lies not in hands mean as yours to harm Cæsar Basterga of Padua! And that to-night, of all nights, I bear a charmed life! I carry, Syndic, a kingdom and its fortunes!"
He seemed to swell with the thought, and in comparison of the sickly man scowling darkly on him from the wall, he did indeed look a king, as he turned to the door, flung it wide and passed into the passage. With only the street door between him and the hub-bub that was beginning to fill the night, he could measure the situation. He had stayed late. The beat of many feet hastening one way—towards the Porte Tertasse—the clatter of weapons as here and there a man trailed his pike on the stones, the roar of rising voices, the rattle of metal as some one hauled a chain across the end of the Bourg du Four and hooked it—sounds such as these might have alarmed an ordinary man who knew himself cut off from his party, and isolated among foes.
But Basterga did not quail. His belief in his star was genuine; he was intoxicated with the success which he fancied lay within his grasp. He carried Cæsar and his fortunes! was it in mean men to harm him? Nay, so confident was he, that when he had opened the door he stood an instant on the threshold viewing the strange scene, and quoted with an appreciation as strange—
"At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu
Miscetur, penitusque cavae plangoribus aedes
Femineis ululant; ferit aurea sidera clamor"—
from his favourite poet. After which without hesitation but also without hurry he turned and plunged into the stream of passers that was hurrying towards the Porte Tertasse.