Outside, in the deserted hall, the Three Louis stared at one another, heedless of the laughter behind the gilded doors, indifferent to the hilarity, regardless of the license characteristic of a supper-party in such a house at such an hour. For long enough the Three Louis kept one another company, while the great wax candles dwindled slowly, and the noise and laughter beyond seemed interminable. Then the door of the antechamber opened, and the hunchback entered the hall and paused for a moment, glancing at each of the Three Louis, with a look of love for one, a look of hate for the other, and a look of homage for the third. At the hunchback's heels came Cocardasse and Passepoil, waiting on events. The hunchback stood for a moment listening to the noise and jollity beyond the doors. Then he turned to his followers: "My enemy makes merry to-night. I think I shall take the edge off his merriment by-and-by. But the trick has its risks, and we hazard our lives. Would you like to leave the game? I can play it alone." Cocardasse answered with his favorite salute: "I am with you in this if it ends in the gallows." Passepoil commented: "That's my mind." Lagardere looked at them as one looks at friends who act in accordance with one's expectation of them. "Thanks, friends," he said. Then he sat at Gonzague's table, dipped pen in ink, and wrote two hurried letters. One he handed to Cocardasse. "This letter to the king, instantly." The other he handed to Passepoil. "This to Gonzague's notary, instantly. Come back and wait in the anteroom. When you hear me cry out, 'Lagardere, I am here,' into the room and out with your swords for the last chance and the last fight." Cocardasse laid his hand on the sham hump of the sham Æsop. "Courage, comrade, the devil is dead." Lagardere laughed at him, something wistfully. "Not yet." Passepoil suggested, timidly: "We live in hopes." Then Cocardasse and Passepoil went out through the antechamber, and Lagardere remained alone with the Three Louis. He rose again and looked at them each in turn, and his mind was hived with memories as he gazed. Before Louis de Nevers he thought of those old days in Paris when the name of the fair and daring duke was on the lips of all men and of all women, and when he met him for the first time and got his lesson in the famous thrust, and when he met him for the second and last time in the moat at Caylus and gave him the pledge of brotherhood. Looking now on the beautiful, smiling face, Lagardere extended his hand to the painted cloth, as if he almost hoped that the painted hand could emerge from it and clasp his again in fellowship, and so looking he renewed the pledge of brotherhood and silently promised the murdered man a crown of revenge.