"Hush!" he whispered, shaking a warning finger at me. "Remember the child; we must not disturb his sleep. This is the meaning: '_Shall he live? He shall not live! Let him die the death, thou shalt surely kill him._' Either a foolish jest," he went on, stooping over the paper, "or a spark from Hell, and at times the one is not far from being the other. The Latin is sound enough as Latin goes in these degenerate days; that is what I meant by saying the letter was better than the spirit. It is the reverse of the text. The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Here it is the letter that is sound and wholesome, but the spirit killeth. Note the terseness of it. Either the necromantic or the devil, his master, was--oh! my son, my son, what is the matter? Art thou ill? Faint? The sun this morning? Jesu! What is it?" How could I answer? How could I do more than stand aghast? What a plot it was! What a damnable, cunning plot! What a playing on the passions--love, greed, vengeance, and what passed with the King for piety! What an interweaving of life and death and the powers of Hell! Oh, what cunning, what damnable cunning! If a bribe will buy this houseless, ragged wretch, this friendless outcast from his class, then there is Solignac and the old lands of his house waiting for him in Flanders. If love will hold him obedient, here is his mistress hostage to my mercy, the mercy of Louis of France! the mercy of the rack in Plessis and Tristan's House of the Great Nails, that all may know this is the King's vengeance for a duty unfulfilled! Or perhaps hate will move him! Then take Jan Meert, take my own ancient tool, who has never known a scruple to trip him in my service--take him, and do as you list by him. Or if these fail, if Navarre outbribes me, if a new love quenches the old, if revenge grows cold, there still remains the Cross of Saint Lo whereon who swears falsely perishes both in this world and the next. Remember the child! said Brother Paul, his finger on his lips. Remember him? Would God I could forget him! Something of this was in my face, but not to be read aright by the gentle heart beside me, for Brother Paul took me in his arms, fearing I would fall, and how could a priest of God knowingly so hold one sworn to shed innocent blood? But I put him aside. "The paper, quick!" and snatching it from his hand, I tore it into fragments too small to be pieced together again. I do not pretend I had any clear plan in my head; a blind instinct often moves us, and it is only later we understand why we did thus and thus. But what Brother Paul failed to read in my face he gathered from the sudden violence of the act, though dimly. What mind as innocent as his could, on the instant, plumb to such an infamy? Again, being his Master's servant, he took me in his arms, laying his hands upon my shoulders, his grey face all lined with sorrow.