"You may have heard me speak of a crusader's mace."
"Yes, Master."
"That's when I used it. I had an inspiration," he remarked quietly.
"Master," said I after a while, "if Madame de Verneuil believed you to be dead, it must have been a shock to her when she saw you alive at Aix-les-Bains."
"She learned soon after her marriage that her husband had been mistaken. Her mother had caught sight of me in Venice. Madame de Verneuil never forgave him the lie. She is gentle, my son, but she has character."
It was after that, I think, that the frozen look came into her eyes. Thenceforward she was ice to the Comte de Verneuil, who for pleasant, domestic companionship had to resort to his rare apes. No wonder his madness took the form of the fixed idea that he had murdered Paragot.
"After all," he mused, "there must have been some good in the man. He desired to make amends. He sent me the old contract, so that his wife should not find it after his death. He confessed everything to her before he died. There is a weak spot somewhere in the heart of the Devil himself. I shouldn't wonder if he were devoted to a canary."
"Master," said I, suddenly bethinking me of the canary in the Rue des Saladiers, "if you marry Madame de Verneuil, what will become of Blanquette?"
"She will come and live with us, of course."
"H'm!" said I.