"And that is all you have to say?"
"At present."
"Very good," d'Albigny replied, nodding contemptuously. "If his Highness be wise——"
"He is wise. At least," Basterga continued drily, "he is wiser than M. d'Albigny. He knows that it is better to wait and win, than leap and lose."
"But what of the discontented you were to bring to a head?" d'Albigny retorted, remembering with relief another head of complaint, on which he had been charged to deliver himself. "The old soldiers and rufflers whom the peace has left unemployed, and with whom the man Grio was to aid you? Surely waiting will not help you with them! There should be some in Geneva who like not the rule of the Pastors and the drone of psalms and hymns! Men who, if I know them, must be on fire for a change! Come, Monsieur Basterga, is no use to be made of them?"
"Ay," Basterga answered, after stepping back a pace to assure himself by a careful look that no one was remarking a colloquy which the time and the weather rendered suspicious. "Use them if you please. Let them drink and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends and their line of conduct!"
"So! that is your opinion, is it, Monsieur Basterga?" d'Albigny answered. "And with it I must go as I came! I am of no use here, it seems?"
"Of great use presently, of none now," Basterga replied with greater respect than he had hitherto exhibited. "Frankly, M. d'Albigny, they fear you and suspect you. But if President Rochette of Chambery, who has the confidence of the Pastors, were to visit us on some pretext or other, say to settle such small matters as the peace has left in doubt, it might soothe their spirits and allay their suspicions. He, rather than M. d'Albigny, is the helper I need at present."
D'Albigny grunted, but it was evident that the other's boldness impressed him. "You think, then, that they suspect us?" he said.
"How should they not? Tell me that. How should they not? Rochette's task must be to lull those suspicions to sleep. In the meantime I——"