"What?" asked Gonzague, in amazement. The hunchback made a little, appealing gesture. "Little Æsop wants his reward." Gonzague thought he understood now. "True. What is your price?" The hunchback, more bowed than ever, with his hair more than ever huddled about his face, swayed his crippled body whimsically, and when he spoke he spoke, apologetically: "I am a man of strange fancies, highness." Gonzague was annoyed at these preliminaries to a demand, this beating about the bush for payment. "Don't plague me with your fancies. Your price?" The hunchback spoke, slowly, like a man who measures his words and enjoys the process of measurement: "If I killed Lagardere, it was not solely to please you. It was partly to please myself. I was jealous." Gonzague smiled slightly. "Of his swordsmanship?" The hunchback protested, vehemently. "No, I was his equal there. I was jealous of his luck in love." Gonzague laughed. "Æsop in love!" The hunchback seemed to take the laugh in good part. "Æsop is in love, and you can give him his heart's desire. She was in Lagardere's keeping. She is now in yours. Give her to me." Gonzague almost reeled under the amazing impudence of the suggestion. "Gabrielle de Nevers! Madman!" He laughed as he spoke, but the hunchback interrupted his laugh. "Wait. You have to walk over two dead women to touch the wealth of Nevers. I offer to take one woman out of your way. Do not kill Gabrielle; give her to me." Gonzague stared for a while at the hunchback in silence. "I believe the rogue is serious," he said, more as a reflection addressed to himself than as a remark addressed to the hunchback. But the hunchback answered it: "Yes, for I love her. Give her to me, and I will take her far away from Paris, and you shall never hear of her again. She will no longer be the daughter of Nevers; she will be the wife of Æsop the hunchback." The proposition was not unpleasing to Louis of Gonzague. It certainly seemed to offer a way of getting rid of the girl without the necessity of killing her, and Gonzague was too fastidious to desire to commit murder where murder was wholly unnecessary, but the thing seemed impossible. "She would never consent," he protested. The hunchback laughed softly, a low laugh of self-confidence. "Look at me, monseigneur," he said, "Æsop the hunchback, but do not laugh while you look and damn me for an impossible gallant. Crooked and withered as I am, I have power to make women love me. Let me try. If I fail to win the girl, do what you please with her, and I will ask no more." Gonzague looked keenly at the bowed, supplicating figure. "Are you thinking of playing me false?" he murmured. "Do you dream of taking the girl to give her to her mother?" The hunchback laughed--a dry, strident laugh. "Would Æsop be a welcome son-in-law to the Princess de Gonzague?"