man, Basterga with all his faults
was brave; and he had failed in too many schemes to resign this one
lightly.

"Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinae,"

he murmured; and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here.
Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of
immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung were not to
snap untimely.

Blondel! He lived by Blondel. And Blondel--why had he left the bridge in
that strange fashion? Abruptly, desperately, as if something had
befallen him. Why? He must learn, and that quickly.

CHAPTER XVI.

A GLOVE AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in great
disgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered the
huddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left the
glittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; and
most distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frosty
sunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might have
been a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, might
have been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Anne
stood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel and
Louis, these man[oe]uvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of a
conspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They had
made a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will and
pleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absence
they might work--Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he would
know, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice.

His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whom
he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he
countered with hot defiant glances--he included them in his anathema. He
extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the
rest. They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms,
insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection.
All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from
her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the
clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his
eyes to the mountains.

One thing only perplexed him. He understood the attitude of Basterga and