Orléans said nothing for a time. Speaking, his voice was quiet, but a little hoarse. “It is perhaps as well for you, my friend, that my people have been dismissed. Yes, I am expecting Madame de Phalaris, who is as yet amusingly shame-faced about her adulteries. So there is nobody about, and we may speak frankly. With frankness, then, I warn you that it is not wholesome to threaten a prince of the blood, and that if you continue in this tone you may not long be permitted to talk anywhere, not even in one of the many prisons at my disposal.” “Ah, your highness, let us not speak of my death, for it is a death which you would deplore.” “Would I deplore your death?” Orléans’ head was now cocked until it almost lay upon his left shoulder. “It is a fact of which I am not wholly persuaded.” “Monseigneur, mere self-respect demands that one’s death should rouse some grief among one’s friends. So I have made certain that your grief would be inevitable and deep. For I am impatient of truisms—” “And what have truisms to do with our affair?” “The statement that dead men tell no tales, your highness, is a truism.” “Yes, and to be candid, Florian, it is that particular truism of which I was just thinking.” “Well, it is this particular truism I have elected to deride. My will is made, the disposing of my estate is foreordered, and every legacy enumerated. One of these legacies is in the form of a written narrative: it is not a romance, it is an entirely veracious chronicle, dealing with the last hours of four of your kinsmen; and it is bequeathed to a fifth kinsman, to your cousin, the Duc de Bourbon. Should I die in one of your prisons, monseigneur,—a calamity which I perceive to be already fore-shadowed in your mind,—that paper would go to him.” The Duke of Orléans considered this. There had been much whispering; mobs in the street had shouted, “Burn the poisoner!” when Orléans passed: but this was different. Once Bourbon had half the information which Florian de Puysange was able to give, there would be of course no question of burning Orléans, since one does not treat a prince of the blood like fuel: but there would be no doubt, either, of his swift downfall nor of his subsequent death by means of the more honorable ax. Orléans knew all this. Orléans also knew Florian. In consequence Orléans asked, “Is what you tell me the truth?” “Faith of a gentleman, monseigneur!” Orléans sighed. “It is a pity. By contriving this conditional post-mortem sort of confession to the devil-work you prompted, you have contrived an equally devilish safeguard. Yes, if you are telling the truth, for me to have you put out of the way would be injudicious. And you do tell the truth, confound you! Broad-minded as you are in many ways, Florian, you are a romantic, and I have never known you to break your given word or to voice any purely utilitarian lie. You are positively queer about that.”