"Howl, Burgundy, snap your jaws, Spain! Tear at the bars, Rome, tear! tear! Perhaps one day the way will open, and then--eh, my sons? then we shall see, shall we not? That is the one thing needed, an open door, and, Christus! but it is creaking on its hinges if the world but knew it!" It was good Flemish, and not the mumbling jumble of a half-baked Angevin clod! "Here's to make it creak louder," he went on. "Here's to help it open with a crash that will shake all France from the Nivernais to the three seas." From under his leathern jerkin he drew an armourer's file such as is used for cutting rivets, long, flat, and coarse, and through the howls of the frantic brutes came the steady rasp, rasp, rasp, while the sweat grew cold upon me at the cunning devilishness of the villian's purpose. "Your dinner to-day, Burgundy," said he, plying the tool steadily under cover of the howling din. "Your dinner to-morrow, but the third day you must go a-hunting. One spring and you're through, my children; Rome, Burgundy, and the Empire all on France at a leap, and Spain crawling in behind to claim her share of the spoils. Good!" as one of the famished brutes, crouching, thundered against the bars, "that is the trick to play when a man jeers your empty belly. Spring! and you're through! but not to-day nor to-morrow. When the third day comes, then, God with us! poof! You're through! you're through!" and again the rasp, rasp, rasp arose, harsh and strident, his body swinging in rhythm to the grind of the tool. CHAPTER XII MONSEIGNEUR'S COUNTERPLOT If ever there had been a doubt of the scoundrel's treacherous purpose there was none now and, the beasts being at last fed, and he gone, it was with a humbled heart I slipped from my hiding-place. My God! What a secret to hold! Truly those who net in King's waters sometimes land strange fish. For a moment my purpose staggered. Jan Meert was the King's tool. Let me but hold my peace for two days, and the hand and brain which set that tool working would pass to judgment by as red a road as had dead Babette. I owed the King no loyalty, no gratitude, no love. Love! Who in all France or out of it owed Louis love? Mademoiselle? No, hate rather; for in some way which I did not understand, Louis stood to her for ruin and the wreck of all she held most dear. Again my purpose staggered. Once already I have said I was not in love with Mademoiselle, but she had stirred my sympathy, and except Martin, and perhaps, no, not perhaps, certainly--Brigitta and the dead Babette, no one had touched me so nearly as that since my mother died.