‘Yes, your Excellency,’ he said, confirming something he had stated before and which I had missed, ‘and I am told that the last time he came into the gallery there was not a man of all the scores who had been at his levee last Monday would speak to him. They fell off like rats—just like rats—until he was left standing alone. And I have seen him!’—Frison lifted up his eyes and his hands and drew in his breath—‘Ah! I have seen the King look shabby beside him! And his eye! I would not like to meet it now.’
‘Pish!’ I growled. ‘Someone has fooled you. Men are wiser than that.’
‘So? Well, your Excellency understands,’ he answered meekly. ‘But—there are no cats on a cold hearth.’
I told him again that he was a fool. But for all that, and my reasoning, I felt uncomfortable. This was a great man, if ever a great man lived, and they were all leaving him; and I—well, I had no cause to love him. But I had taken his money, I had accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him. These three things being so, if he fell before I could—with the best will in the world—set myself right with him, so much the better for me. That was my gain—the fortune of war, the turn of the dice. But if I lay hid, and took time for my ally, and being here while he still stood, though tottering, waited until he fell, what of my honour then? What of the grand words I had said to Mademoiselle at Agen? I should be like the recreant in the old romance, who, lying in the ditch while the battle raged, came out afterwards and boasted of his courage.
And yet the flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days, might make the difference between life and death, love and death; and I wavered. But at last I settled what I would do. At noon the next day, the time at which I should have presented myself if I had not heard this news, at that time I would still present myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that was due to him.
Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the first light I was awake, and it was all I could do to keep myself quiet until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to know if there was any news, and lay waiting and listening while he went down to the street to learn. It seemed an endless time before he came back; an age, when he came back, before he spoke.
‘Well, he has not set off?’ I asked at last, unable to control my eagerness.
Of course he had not; and at nine o’clock I sent Frison out again; and at ten and eleven—always with the same result. I was like a man waiting and looking and, above all, listening for a reprieve; and as sick as any craven. But when he came back, at eleven, I gave up hope and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I had an odd look then, however, for Frison stopped me at the door, and asked me, with evident alarm, where I was going.
I put the little man aside gently.
‘To the tables,’ I said, ‘to make a big throw, my friend.’