business, and through your agency he must be extricated from it."

"Your Eminence jests!"

"Undoubtedly,--'t is a jesting matter," he answered with terrible irony.
"Oh, I jest! Per Dio! yes. But I'll carry my jest so far as to have you
hanged if this duel be fought--aye, whether my nephew suffers hurt or not.
Now, sir, you know what fate awaits you; fight it--turn it aside--I have
shown you the way. The door, M. de Luynes."




CHAPTER III

THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET


I let him go without a word. There was that in his voice, in his eye, and
in the gesture wherewith he bade me hold the door for him, that cleared my
mind of any doubts touching the irrevocable character of his determination.
To plead was never an accomplishment of mine; to argue, I saw, would be to
waste the Cardinal's time to no purpose.

And so I let him go,--and my curse with him,--and from my window I watched
his coach drive away in the drizzling rain, scattering the crowd of awe-
stricken loiterers who had collected at the rumour of his presence.

With a fervent prayer that his patron saint, the devil, might see fit to
overset his coach and break his neck before he reached the Palace, I turned