White Plume still with him.
Only he of the Plume entered not in to the chapel, but stayed without,
playing at tennis with the strongest and bravest youths of the court,
and laughing when they beat him, or when the ball took him in his face.

"And all the while the crowd cried, 'Long live the White Plume! Long
live Navarre!' And sometimes from the back, one or two would raise a
feeble cry 'Long live France! Long live Henry of Valois!'"

The Chief Inquisitor brought down his fist on the table with a crash, so
that the wine-bottles tottered and a glass smashed.

"But he shall not--by the crucifix, he shall not!" he hissed,
chill-white with anger. "He shall die--if there be poison in Italy,
steel in France, or----"

"Money in Spain!" said Mariana calmly, putting his hand on the arm of
his coadjutor. "Well, there is not much--but this is the Street of the
Money--and I judge we shall find enough for that!"

CHAPTER XXX.

JEAN-AUX-CHOUX TAKES HIS WAGES

No sooner had Jean-aux-Choux departed from the terrible house in the
Street of the Money at Perpignan, in which he had found the three
inquisitors seated, than Mariana, with a sigh of relief, drew from his
breast a document on cream-coloured vellum.

Before reading it he looked at the other two, and especially at Frey
Tullio the Neapolitan.

"We are all good Spaniards," he was about to begin. But remembering in
time the birthplace of the junior inquisitor, he altered his sentence
into, "We are all good subjects of King Philip?"

Surintendant Teruel and Frey Tullio bowed their heads. They wondered
what was coming, and Tullio was growing not a little sleepy. Even
inquisitors must sleep. A pulley-wheel creaked overhead uneasily. Down
in the Place of Pain the familiars were trying the ropes for the morrow.
There was one that had not acted satisfactorily in the case of that
Valencian Jew in the afternoon. They had been ordered to mend it. King
Philip did not approve of paying for new ropes too often. Besides, the
old were better. They did not stretch so much. Blood and tears had
dropped upon them.

So ever and anon the pulley creaked complainingly between two
rafters, in the pauses of the Jesuit's soft voice, as he read
the Pope's condemnation of King Henry III. of France (called of
Valois)--excommunicated, outcasted, delivered to Satan that he might
learn not to offend--for the sin of alliance with the heretic, for the
sin of schism and witchcraft--"ordered to