"Her family are proud also, I am told; and powerful. Friends of the Cardinal too, I hear." The man in black's smile was like nothing save the crocodile's. M. de Vidoche rose from his seat, but sat down again. "He would avenge the honour of the family to the death," continued the astrologer gently. "To the death, I should say. Don't you think so, M. de Vidoche?" The perspiration stood in thick drops on the young man's forehead, and he glared at his tormentor. But the latter met the look placidly, and seemed ignorant of the effect he was producing. "It is a pity, therefore, monsieur is not free to marry," he said, shaking his head regretfully--"a great pity. One does not know what may happen. Yet, on the other hand, if he had not married he would be a poor man now." M. de Vidoche sprang to his feet with an oath. But he sat down again. "When he married he _was_ a poor man, I think," the astrologer continued, for the first time averting his gaze from the other's face, and looking into the fire with a queer smile. "And in debt. Madame--the present Madame de Vidoche, I mean--paid his debts, and brought him an estate, I believe." "Of which she has never ceased to remind him twice a day since!" the young man cried in a terrible voice. And then in a moment he lost all self-control, all disguise, all the timid cunning which had marked him hitherto. He sprang to his feet. The veins in his temples swelled, his face grew red. So true is it that small things try us more than great ones, and small grievances rub deeper raws than great wrongs. "My God!" he said between his teeth, "if you knew what I have suffered from that woman! Pale-faced, puling fool, I have loathed her these five years, and I have been tied to her and her whining ways and her nun's face! Twice a day? No, ten times a day, twenty times a day, she has reminded me of my debts, my poverty, and my straits before I married her! And of her family! And her three marshals! And her----" He stopped for very lack of breath. "Madame was of good family?" the man in black said abruptly. He had grown suddenly attentive. His shadow on the wall behind him was still and straight-backed. "Oh, yes," the husband answered bitterly. "In Perigord?' "Oh, yes." "Three marshals of France?" M. Nôtredame murmured thoughtfully; but there was a strange light in his eyes, and he kept his face carefully averted from his companion. "That is not common! That is certainly something to boast of!" "_Mon Dieu!_ She did boast of it, though no one else allowed the claim. And of her blood of Roland!" M. de Vidoche cried, with scorn. His voice still shook, and his hands trembled with rage. He strode up and down. "What was her name before she married?" the astrologer asked, stooping over the fire. The young man stopped, arrested in his passion--stopped, and looked at him suspiciously. "Her name?" he muttered. "What has that to do with it?"