"H'm!" he answered, "a jail surgeon merely. And that brings me to a point, monsieur. I have had letters from France. The Grande Marquise--I may as well be frank with you--womanlike, yearns violently for those silly letters which you hold. She would sell our France for them. There is a chance for you who would serve your country so. Serve it, and yourself--and me. We have no news yet as to your doom, but be sure it is certain. La Pompadour knows all, and if you are stubborn, twenty deaths were too few. I can save you little longer, even were it my will so to do. For myself, the great lady girds at me for being so poor an agent. You, monsieur"--he smiled whimsically--"will agree that I have been persistent--and intelligent." "So much so," rejoined I, "as to be intrusive." He smiled again. "If La Pompadour could hear you, she would understand why I prefer the live amusing lion to the dead dog. When you are gone, I shall be inconsolable. I am a born inquisitor." "You were born for better things than this," I answered. He took a seat and mused for a moment. "For larger things, you mean," was his reply. "Perhaps--perhaps. I have one gift of the strong man--I am inexorable when I make for my end. As a general, I would pour men into the maw of death as corn into the hopper, if that would build a bridge to my end. You call to mind how those Spaniards conquered the Mexique city which was all canals like Venice? They filled the waterways with shattered houses and the bodies of their enemies, as they fought their way to Montezuma's palace. So I would know not pity if I had a great cause. In anything vital I would have success at all cost, and to get, destroy as I went--if I were a great man." I thought for a moment with horror of his pursuit of my dear Alixe. "I am your hunter," had been his words to her, and I knew not what had happened in all these months. "If you were a great man, you should have the best prerogative of greatness," I remarked quietly. "And what is that? Some excellent moral, I doubt not," was the rejoinder. "Mercy," I replied.