"Nothing. Van den Enden brought her to me here and said she might be useful, being Norman. When she heard you were the head and front of our future undertaking, she said she would do all we might ask. She had, as I say, seen you before and--la! la!--admired you. But she was poor, she said, and she must live. As you now know, the Jew brought you and her together, and she was finally vowed heart and soul to us, to the cause--to you. De Beaurepaire, you can grapple her to that cause, to yourself; you can make her do aught you, or we, desire if you will but give her a kindly word, a----" "I will think upon it," the Prince said, while telling himself that already he had thought enough. "She will be worth it. Do that. Be generous to her and she will go hand in hand to the scaffold with you if you desire." "_Bon Dieu!_ there is no need for that. And the scaffold is not for a De Beaurepaire." "The heavens forbid! Yet, when the time comes--it is at hand--we shall throw a great stake." "And win!" "So be it. I live in hopes." After De Beaurepaire had seen Emérance again, after he had more carefully observed her soft features and noted her sad look: above all, after he had seen one or two of the glances she had cast on him, he decided he would grapple her to him and to the cause. A woman such as this was wanted for the scheme he had on foot--the wild, delirious scheme of striving to find himself ruler of France and with, it might be, Louis for his subject instead of his king. He would do it, he would use Emérance de Villiers-Bordéville, as she called herself, to wheedle and hoodwink others, to sow the poison-seed of treachery and anarchy and revolt in their souls, to ride for him to other countries with messages and treaties to be signed and executed; to do all he bade her. And, as slaves had ere now been crowned with roses and rewarded, so he would crown and reward her. He would be soft and gentle to her, he vowed; he would speak her fair and sweet, and she should be well repaid for her services and no longer go in rags or live poorly.