fact,
I may go farther and say that were I in your place, Messer Blondel, I
should seize him to-day."

"Ay, within the hour!"

"This minute!" said Baudichon, last of the three. And all three, their
ultimatum delivered, looked at Blondel, a challenge in their eyes. If he
stood out longer, if he still declined to take the step which prudence
demanded, the step on which they were all agreed, they would know that
there was something behind, something of which he had not told them.

Blondel read the look, and it perturbed him. But not to the point of
sapping the resolution which he had formed at the Council Table, and to
which, once formed, he clung with the obstinacy of an obstinate man. The
_remedium_ first; afterwards what they would, but the _remedium_ first.
He was not going to risk life, warm life, the vista of sunny unending
to-morrows, of springs and summers and the melting of snows, for a
craze, a scare, an imaginary danger! Why at that very minute the lad
whom he had commissioned to seize the thing might be on the way with it.
At any minute a step might sound on the threshold, and herald the
promise of life. And then--then they might deal with Basterga as they
pleased. Then they might hang the Paduan high as Haman, if they pleased.
But until then--his mind was made up.

"I do not agree with you," he said, his underlip thrust out, his head
trembling a little.

"You will not arrest him?"

"No, I shall not arrest him," he replied, hardening himself to meet
their protestant and indignant eyes. "Nor would you," he continued with
bravado, "in my place. If you knew as much as I do."

"But if you know," Baudichon said, "I would like to know also."

"The responsibility is mine." Blondel swayed himself from side to side
in his chair as he said it. "The responsibility is mine, and I am
willing to bear it. It is the old difference of policy between us," he
continued, addressing Petitot. "You are willing to grasp at every petty
advantage, I am willing----"

"To risk much to gain much," Petitot exclaimed.

"To take some risk to gain a real advantage," Blondel retorted,
correcting him with an eye to Fabri; whom alone, as the one impartial
hearer, he feared. "For to what does the course which you are so eager
to take amount? You seize Basterga: later, you will release him at the
Grand Duke's request. What are we the better? What is gained?"

"Safety."

"No, on the other hand, danger. Danger! For, warned that we have