Babet did not return to the kitchen; she proceeded up the stairs to the room where Rosaline was talking to M. de Baudri. The door was closed; but refined scruples were not among the good housekeeper’s faults, and she calmly applied her ear to the keyhole, all the while clasping the tongs fiercely under her apron; and for the next twenty minutes her face was a picture. More than once she had her hand on the latch, but prudence finally prevailed, and three minutes before M. de Baudri emerged, she made her way cautiously back to the kitchen. She had heard enough to understand the whole, and she descended upon the cobbler like an avalanche, carrying all before her. In the storm of her indignation she could not remain silent, and she poured out the whole story of M. de Baudri’s shameless persecution of his prisoner. Le Bossu had long ago learned the lesson of self-control, and he listened with composure, though his face seemed to have aged since the morning. “_Mon Dieu!_” cried Babet, regardless now of the sentry’s stare, “he would force that white dove to marry him! That villain de Baudri--may the _bon Dieu_ blast him as the great chestnut-tree yonder was blasted with lightning! He--the rogue--would make mademoiselle sell herself to him to save old madame and her lover. Woe is me, why did that man d’Aguesseau ever come here?” The hunchback looked up, surprise in his dull eyes. “What do you mean?” he demanded, “save her lover? Her lover is safe in the Cévennes.” “Much you know!” retorted the woman, scornfully; “it seems that he was captured this morning.” The cobbler was silent a moment, thinking deeply. “I do not believe it,” he said quietly. “You think it a lie of that devil’s?” asked Babet, eagerly. He nodded. “M. de Baudri is doing it to force her to yield,” he said slowly; “he has sworn to marry her. I do not believe that he has taken one Huguenot prisoner to-day, save--” he stopped, and looked out of the window at the sentry, who kept staring in with a furious face. “_Dieu_, what a fiend!” exclaimed Babet, thrusting her tongs into the fire, where they would heat, after casting a vicious glance toward the window. “He has given mademoiselle until to-morrow morning to decide,” she added. “What will she do?” the cobbler asked in a strange voice. “Do? oh, I know her!” the woman retorted with a snort; “to save those two she would die. She’ll marry him unless--” Babet thrust the tongs deeper in the coals, “unless I wring his neck!” “That cannot be done,” remarked le Bossu, soberly, “but something must be done to-night.” “What?” snapped his companion, “what can a hunchback and an old woman do? A pretty pair of birds for such an emergency. Leer away, young man; I have the tongs ready for you!” she added in an aside, her fierce eyes on the window. “Has she one true friend with influence in Nîmes?” the cobbler asked. Babet shook her head, and then, after a moment’s thought,-- “There is Père Ambroise,” she said.