"The letter," Fabri replied, returning to it, "touches him seriously. It asserts that a person of that name is here in the Grand Duke's interest, that he is in the secret of these plots, and that we should do well to expel him, if we do not seize and imprison him."
"And you want to know——"
"I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel."
Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said.
"Ay, ay."
"No more than you know!"
"But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town."
"And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had. That is what I want to know!"
"Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do you know?" he asked.
"No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was granted to him in the name of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and doubtless—for licences to reside are not granted without such—he had letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him with the licence."