"Oh, monsieur, you overrate my power! And this is not amusing. It is too hot to talk of such things." "Madame, be merciful! Spare her! She never harmed you." "What!" And tossing the bird from her she rose to her feet, lithe as a pantheress. So perfectly was she formed that one did not realise how tall she was until she came near; and she was close enough to me now, her eyes flashing with a hundred evil, angry lights. "She never harmed me? Never hurt me? She! That white-faced provincial, with her airs of virtue, who tried to shame me in public! Look you, I hate that woman! Do you hear? I hate her--hate her! If by the lifting of my little finger I could save her, do you think I would? Never! Let her die! And she shall die, as Philippine de Lune did----" "Madame!" "And you!" she burst in, "insolent that you are!--you! who have dared to come here! Think you that you will go free?" "Enough, madame! I no longer appeal to your pity." She had half turned from me, and made a step towards the gong as if to strike it, but faced back like lightning, womanlike determined to have the last word. "_Mon Dieu_! but this surpasses all." "Not in the least! I begged for your mercy at first; now I bring to you the Queen's commands." She almost gasped, and then laughed out loudly. "The Queen's commands--the commands of Madame Grosse-Tete to me! Ha! ha! ha! I took you for an insolent fool; but you are mad, monsieur, mad!" For answer I held out to her one of her letters to De Ganache. "The Queen desires you to see this, madame. It is your own writing to a man you have killed, body and soul--and there are many others like this--so it would be useless to destroy it. Read it!" She stared at me for an instant in blank amaze, and then snatched the paper from me, her face white, her hands trembling. One glance at it, and she burst out: "This is a forgery! A base forgery!" And then I laughed, for there would now be no mercy shown towards this she-wolf. "There is no forgery there! And there are other proofs. What think you that your Syrian go-between will say when put to the question? What of your glovemaker Camus, and the house in the Rue des Lavandieres? Madame, you are alone here but for a half score of your archers and that fool Crequy. Think you that with such proofs in her hand the Queen would hesitate even to arrest you?" "Arrest me!" she stammered. "Yes! There are charges enough. What think you that the King--Monsieur Grosse-Tete as you call him--will say when he sees these letters, and hears of the triangle, and learns that all France, and all Europe, will know his shame, and of the infamous grant you cajoled him into giving you?" She shivered and looked around her as I went on coldly: "Call your guards if you will; but I swear to you that if you do within the hour you will fall so low that the very women of the Marais and the Temple would pity you!"