“No! I do not count on active help, but passive help. Consider for a moment! Madame plays to keep the waning power of the Valois. She knows well enough that if either the Huguenots--forgive the word--or the Guise destroy each other, they will eat up the Valois. The Huguenots, with Condé, made head. She used the Guise to crush them, but events have proved too much for her, and the dragon’s teeth she sowed have sprung up against her in full crop. She lends a willing ear to the Chancellor, who has declined to affix the Seal to the warrant. Sancerre has flatly refused to give his assent to the verdict, and Cipierre, the Governor of Orleans, who, as you know, is my uncle, is a deadly foe of the Guise. Fear not! We will keep our heads and succeed.” “And the Guise? You have left out that weight in the scale.” “Well! We shall see which weighs heavier, Italian craft or the sword of Lorraine. But, to go on, the Prince is permitted to see a few friends. The plan is that I will obtain an interview with him, and when I, or rather the Prince comes out, it win be your business to get him to Poitou, and it is for this that I wanted a true friend, Gaspard, and who more true than you! Think you I have forgotten Renty or the Escaillon?” I could hardly bear his praise; the words seemed to sting like a lash; but I brought myself together and asked: “And you, Marcilly? Do you know what this means for you?” “I,” he laughed, “I will join you in Poitou later on. But we waste time in chattering. Let us hasten!” He knew as well as I did that he never would see Poitou, and that he was laying down his life for another as cheerfully as if he were going to a minuet. And I rode in bitterness by the side of this man who could be so great while I was so small. Shame, black shame, filled my heart, for I was bridle to bridle with one whom I called friend with my lips, but to whom in my soul I was a traitor. I felt that I hated him--hated him who had done me no wrong all the more because I sought to injure him. I linked him unreasonably with the moral degradation into which I had fallen; and the more I recognized the depth to which I had sunk, the hotter grew the fires of my anger. Why did he not die before Châtillon? There would have been nothing then to stand between Marie and myself. Yet with this thought there flashed upon me her own appeal on the night when last we met. She had given me strength then, and I resisted. There came a glow with the memory of that one good deed, a glow of generous impulse that made me feel for a moment again a man. I bent my head to the saddle and prayed for help, a voiceless prayer. Alas! It never got beyond the gray darkness of that night.