Indeed, at this moment she was putting to pagan uses and misinterpreting the dictum of the Gospel: "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out." She was wilfully closing her heart against every dictate of sentiment or of motherhood. As she would have been ready--and more than ready--to risk her own life for the sake of her cause, so was she willing to throw into the balance of her King's cause the safety of a man who happened to be in the way, even if at the same time he happened to be her son. And Leroux, the servile tool in the nefarious work, knew exactly what was passing in the proud lady's mind: he knew that she had understood the covert hint which he had thrown out, and that by her very silence she had acquiesced in his schemes. He had no intention of relinquishing the ten thousand francs which had been offered him because of that obstacle which he was more than ready to sweep out of his path. Murderer, incendiary, thief, jail-bird and convict!--what was a crime more or less upon the conscience of such a man? Nor did he feel the slightest respect for these people who had bribed him to do a monstrous treachery. Brute as he was, he was shrewd enough to look upon them as his equals in villainy, and to realize that they had far more to gain by the iniquitous deed which he contemplated than he had himself. And for a while there was silence in the room while this man and this woman--the jail-bird and the high-born lady--looked straight into one another's eyes and tacitly sealed a bond of fraternity between them. The measured ticking of a clock upon the mantelpiece marked the passage of time which separated this unspoken and monstrous compact from its fulfilment by and by. A bundle of papers beneath Madame's hand rustled with weird persistency, and suddenly Leroux gave a laugh, throwing back his head and showing his ugly yellow teeth, and he shrugged his shoulders and spat once more on the carpet ere he queried with contemptuous familiarity: "Then our plans are as they were--eh?" "As they were," replied Madame. The man turned on his heel and started whistling the old "_Ca ira_" of Revolution times through his teeth. "_Ca ira! Ca ira! Les aristos a la lanterne!_" His hand was already on the handle of the door, when he looked once more over his shoulder and said roughly: "Your people are not going to leave me in the lurch, I suppose?" "That is out of the question," replied Madame coldly. "Because you know, my good woman," he said, still over his shoulder, as he opened the door and stepped across the threshold, "if the Marechal gives us trouble to-night and your people fail us afterwards, it will mean hanging for some of us."