“Very well,” said M. Buhot. “To come to the point, it is this, that we desire to have the scheme of the Jesuits for the Prince's assassination, and other atrocities shocking to all that revere the divinity of princes, crumbled up. Father Hamilton is at the very roots of the secret; if, say, a gentleman so much in his confidence as yourself--now, if such a one were, say, to share a cell with this regicide for a night or two, and pursue judicious inquiries----” “Stop! stop!” I cried, my blood hammering in my head, and the words like to choke me. “Am I to understand that you would make me your spy and informer upon this miserable old madman that has led me such a gowk's errand?” Buhot slid back off the table edge and on to his feet. “Oh,” said he, “the terms are not happily chosen: 'spy'--'informer'--come, Monsieur Greig; this man is in all but the actual accomplishment of his purpose an assassin. 'Tis the duty of every honest man to help in discovering the band of murderers whose tool he has been.” “Then I'm no honest man, M. Buhot,” said I bitterly, “for I've no stomach for a duty so dirty.” “Think of it for a moment,” he pressed, with evident surprise at my decision. “Bicêtre is an unwholesome hostelry, I give you my word. Consider that your choice is between a night or two there and--who knows?--a lifetime of Galbanon that is infinitely worse.” “Then let it be Galbanon!” I said, and lifted my sword and slapped it furiously, sheathed as it was, like a switch upon the table. [Illustration: 198] Buhot leaped back in a fear that I was to attack him, and cried his men from the stair foot. “This force is not needed at all,” I said. “I am innocent enough to be prepared to go quietly.” CHAPTER XXII OF A NIGHT JOURNEY AND BLACK BICETRE AT THE END OF IT 'Twas a long journey to the prison of Bicêtre, which is two miles to the south of the city of Paris, a great building that had once (they say) been a palace, but now in the time of my experience was little better than a vestibule of hell. I was driven to it through a black loud night of rain, a plunging troop of horse on either hand the coach as if I were a traveller of state, and Buhot in front of me as silent as the priest had been the day we left Dunkerque, though wakeful, and the tip of his scabbard leaning on my boot to make sure that in the darkness no movement of mine should go unobserved.