"I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel." Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said. "Ay, ay." "No more than you know!" "But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town." "And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had. That is what I want to know!" "Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do you know?" he asked. "No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was granted to him in the name of Caesar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and doubtless--for licences to reside are not granted without such--he had letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him with the licence." "And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer Blondel?" Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" he asked with a sneer. "No, I mean at all!" "I want to know," Baudichon added--the parrot phrase began to carry to Blondel's ears the note of fate--"what you know about him." This time a pause betrayed Blondel's hesitation. Should he admit that he had been to Basterga's lodging; or dared he deny a fact that might imply an intimacy greater than he had acknowledged? A faint perspiration rose on his brow as he decided that he dare not. "I know that he lives in a house in the Corraterie," he answered, "a house beside the Porte Tertasse, and that he is a scholar--I believe of some repute. I know so much," he continued boldly, "because he wrote to thank me for the licence, and, by way of acknowledgment, invited me to visit his lodging to view a rare manuscript of the Scriptures. I did so, and remained a few minutes with him. That is all I know of him. I suppose," with a grim look at Baudichon and the Inquisitor, who had exchanged meaning glances, "it is not alleged that I am in the plot with him? Or that he has confided to me the Grand Duke's plans?" Fabri laughed heartily at the notion, and the laugh, which was echoed by four-fifths of those at the table, cleared the air. Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained." "The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?" "As to--what?" "As to expelling him or seizing him."