His voice rose a key, as it
had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:

"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love
of my affectionate uncle?"

"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you
say."

"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast
off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the
Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at
Ivry."

"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You
had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized
you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you
and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my
army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."

"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.

"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the
name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward,
Lorance de Montluc."

"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off
with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering
house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de
Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the
people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the
scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you
promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the
royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's
camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you
listened to proposals from Mar again."

"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your
brother Charles, either."

"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in
your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you
would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise
you mean."

"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.

"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your
brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the
Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."

"Nom de dieu, Paul--" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning
forward on the table, riv