"I!" cried Paré. "I--leave a man to die when I can cure him? Never! If I am to be hanged for a Calvinist, I will go to the château, all the same, right early to-morrow. Do not you know that the only favor I mean to ask, when I have saved the King, is your Christophe's life? There will surely be a moment when Queen Mary can refuse me nothing?" "Alas, my friend, has not the little King already refused the Princesse de Condé any pardon for her husband? Do not kill your religion by enabling the man to live who ought to die." "Are you going to puzzle yourself by trying to find out how God means to dispose of things in the future?" said Paré. "Honest folks have but one motto--'Do your duty, come what may.'--I did this at the siege of Calais when I set my foot on the Grand Master; I risked being cut down by all his friends and attendants, and here I am, surgeon to the King; I am a Reformer, and yet I can call the Guises my friends.--I will save the King!" cried the surgeon, with the sacred enthusiasm of conviction that genius knows, "and God will take care of France!" There was a knock at the door, and a few minutes later one of Ambroise Paré's servants gave a note to Lecamus, who read aloud these ominous words: "A scaffold is being erected at the Convent of the Récollets for the beheading of the Prince de Condé to-morrow." Ambroise and Lecamus looked at each other, both overpowered with horror. "I will go and make sure," said the furrier. Out on the square, Ruggieri took Lecamus by the arm, asking what was Paré's secret for saving the King; but the old man, fearing some treachery, insisted on going to see the scaffold. So the astrologer and the furrier went together to the Récollets, where, in fact, they found carpenters at work by torchlight. "Hey day, my friend," said Lecamus to one of them; "what business is this?" "We are preparing to hang some heretics, since the bleeding at Amboise did not cure them," said a young friar, who was superintending the workmen. "Monseigneur the Cardinal does well," said the prudent Ruggieri. "But in my country we do even better." "What do you do?" "We burn them, brother." Lecamus was obliged to lean on the astrologer; his legs refused to carry him, for he thought that his son might next day be swinging to one of those gibbets. The poor old man stood between two sciences--astrology and medicine; each promised to save his son, for whom the scaffold was visibly rising. In this confusion of mind he was as wax in the hands of the Florentine. "Well, my most respectable vendor of _vair_, what have you to say to these pleasantries of Lorraine?" said Ruggieri. "Woe the day! You know I would give my own skin to see my boy's safe and sound." "That is what I call talking like a skinner," replied the Italian. "But if you will explain to me the operation that Ambroise proposes to perform on the King, I will guarantee your son's life." "Truly?" cried the old furrier.