He did not wait for my answer, but impatiently snatching up the lantern, he made a sign to me to follow him, and led the way down the passage. He had said not a word of my presence in the house, of my position, of Mademoiselle St. Alais, or how he meant to deal with me; and at the door, not knowing what was in his mind, I touched his shoulder and stopped him. "Pardon me," I said, with as much dignity as I could assume, "but I should like to know what you are going to do with me, Monsieur. I need not tell you that I did not enter this house as a spy----" "You need tell me nothing," he answered, cutting me short with rudeness. "And for what I am going to do with you, it can be told in half a dozen words. I am going to keep you by me, that if the worst comes of this--in which event I am not likely to see the week out--you may protect Mademoiselle de St. Alais and convey her to a place of safety. To that end your commission shall be restored to you; I have it safe. If, on the other hand, we hold our own, and light the fire that shall burn up these cold-blooded _pedants là bas_, then, M. le Vicomte--I shall have a word to say to you. And we will talk of the matter as gentlemen." For a moment I stood dumb with astonishment. We were at the door of the little staircase--by which I had descended--when he said this; and as he spoke the last word, he turned, as expecting no answer, and opened it, and set his foot on the lowest stair, casting the light of the lantern before him. I plucked him by the sleeve, and he turned, and faced me. "M. Froment!" I muttered. And then for the life of me I could say no more. "There is no need for words," he said grandly. "Are you sure--that you know all!" I muttered. "I am sure that she loves you, and that she does not love me," he answered with a curling lip and a ring of scorn in his voice. "And besides that, I am sure of one thing only." "Yes?" "That within forty-eight hours blood will flow in every street of Nîmes, and Froment, the bourgeois, will be Froment le Baron--or nothing! In the former case, we will talk. In the latter," and he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture a little theatrical, "it will not matter." With the word he turned to the stairs, and I followed him up them and across the upper corridor, and by the outer staircase, where I had evaded my guide, and so to the roof, and from it by a short wooden ladder to the leads of a tower; whence we overlooked, lying below us, all the dim black chaos of Nîmes, here rising in giant forms, rather felt than seen, there a medley of hot lights and deep shadows, thrown into relief by the glare of the burning church. In three places I picked out a cresset shining, high up in the sky, as it were; one on the rim of the Arènes, another on the roof of a distant church, a third on a tower beyond the town. But for the most part the town was now at rest. The riot had died down, the bells were silent, the wind blew salt from the sea and cooled our faces.