I won't,' I said.

'You will! You will! And the end I know. I shall have no chance. I am
a clerk, and not bred to fighting. You want to be the death of me!' he
cried excitedly.

'I don't want you to fight,' I answered with some contempt. 'I would
rather that you kept out of it for my mother's sake. I only want you to
stay in the lane and hold the horses. You will run little more risk than
you do sitting by the hearth here.'

And in the end I persuaded him to do what I wished; though still,
whenever he thought of what was in front of him, he fell a-trembling
again, and many times during the afternoon got up and walked to and
fro between the window and the hearth, his face working and his hands
clenched like those of a man in a fever. I put this down at first to
sheer chicken-heartedness, and thought it augured ill for my enterprise;
but presently remarking that he made no attempt to draw back, and that
though the sweat stood on his brow he set about such preparations as
were necessary--remembering also how long and kindly, and without pay or
guerdon, he had served my mother, I began to see that here was something
phenomenal; a man strange and beyond the ordinary, of whom it was
impossible to predicate what he would do when he came to be tried.

For myself, I passed the afternoon in a state almost of apathy. I
thought it my duty to make this attempt to free mademoiselle, and to
make it at once, since it was impossible to say what harm might come of
delay, were she in such hands as Fresnoy's; but I had so little hope of
success that I regarded the enterprise as desperate. The certain loss
of my mother, however, and the low ebb of my fortunes, with the
ever-present sense of failure, contributed to render me indifferent to
risks; and even when we were on our way, through by-streets known to
Simon, to the farther end of the Ruelle d'Arcy, and the red and frosty
sunset shone in our faces, and gilded for a moment the dull eaves and
grey towers above us, I felt no softening. Whatever the end, there was
but one in the world whom I should regret, or who would regret me; and
she hung, herself, on the verge of eternity.

So that I was able to give Simon Fleix his last directions with as
much coolness as I ever felt in my life. I stationed him with the three
horses in the lane--which seemed as quiet and little frequented as in
the morning--near the end of it, and about a hundred paces or more from
the house.

'Turn their heads