‘No, no, my friend,’ I answered, shaking my head warily. ‘That is not according to rule. You are the surrendering party, and it is for you to trust us. Bring out the ladies, that I may have speech with them, and then I will draw off my men.’ ‘Nom de Dieu!’ he cried hoarsely, with so much fear and rage in his face that I recoiled from him. ‘That is just what I cannot do.’ ‘You cannot?’ I rejoined with a sudden thrill of horror. ‘Why not? why not, man?’ And in the excitement of the moment, conceiving the idea that the worst had happened to the women, I pushed him back with so much fury that he laid his hand on his sword. ‘Confound you!’ he stuttered, ‘stand back! It is not that, I tell you! Mademoiselle is safe and sound, and madame, if she had her senses, would be sound too. It is not our fault if she is not. But I have not got the key of the rooms. It is in Bruhl’s pocket, I tell you!’ ‘Oh!’ I made answer drily. ‘And Bruhl?’ ‘Hush, man,’ Fresnoy replied, wiping the perspiration from his brow, and bringing his pallid, ugly face, near to mine, ‘he has got the plague!’ I stared at him for a moment in silence; which he was the first to break. ‘Hush!’ he muttered again, laying a trembling hand on my arm, ‘if the men knew it--and not seeing him they are beginning to suspect it--they would rise on us. The devil himself could not keep them here. Between him and them I am on a razor’s edge. Madame is with him, and the door is locked. Mademoiselle is in a room upstairs, and the door is locked. And he has the keys. What can I do? What can I do, man?’ he cried, his voice hoarse with terror and dismay. ‘Get the keys,’ I said instinctively. ‘What?’ From him?’ he muttered, with an irrepressible shudder, which shook his bloated cheeks. ‘God forbid I should see him! It takes stout men infallibly. I should be dead by night! By God, I should!’ he continued, whining. ‘Now you are not stout, M. de Marsac. If you will come with me I will draw off the men from that part; and you may go in and get the key from him.’ His terror, which surpassed all feeling, and satisfied me without doubt that he was in earnest, was so intense that it could not fail to infect me. I felt my face, as I looked into his, grow to the same hue. I trembled as he did and grew sick. For if there is a word which blanches the soldier’s cheek and tries his heart more than another, it is the name of the disease which travels in the hot noonday, and, tainting the strongest as he rides in his pride, leaves him in a few hours a poor mass of corruption. The stoutest and the most reckless fear it; nor could I, more than another, boast myself indifferent to it, or think of its presence without shrinking. But the respect in which a man of birth holds himself saves him from the unreasoning fear which masters the vulgar; and in a moment I recovered myself, and made up my mind what it behoved me to do. ‘Wait awhile,’ I said sternly, ‘and I will come with you.’