ion I have is at
your disposal.'

However, I saw the imprudence of venturing farther, and hastened to
take leave of him, persuading him to allow one of M. de Rambouillet's
servants to accompany him home. He said that he should call on me in the
morning; and forcing myself to answer him in a suitable manner, I saw
him depart one way, and myself, accompanied by Simon Fleix, went off
another. My feet were frozen with long standing--I think the corpse we
left was scarce colder--but my head was hot with feverish doubts and
fears. The moon had sunk and the streets were dark. Our torch had burned
out, and we had no light. But where my followers saw only blackness and
vacancy, I saw an evil smile and a lean visage fraught with menace and
exultation.

For the more closely I directed my mind to the position in which I
stood, the graver it seemed. Pitted against Bruhl alone, amid strange
surroundings and in an atmosphere of Court intrigue, I had thought my
task sufficiently difficult and the disadvantages under which I laboured
sufficiently serious before this interview. Conscious of a certain
rustiness and a distaste for finesse, with resources so inferior to
Bruhl's that even M. de Rosny's liberality had not done much to make up
the difference, I had accepted the post offered me rather readily than
sanguinely; with joy, seeing that it held out the hope of high reward,
but with no certain expectation of success. Still, matched with a man of
violent and headstrong character, I had seen no reason to despair; nor
any why I might not arrange the secret meeting between the king and
mademoiselle with safety, and conduct to its end an intrigue simple and
unsuspected, and requiring for its execution rather courage and caution
than address or experience.

Now, however, I found that Bruhl was not my only or my most dangerous
antagonist. Another was in the field--or, to speak more correctly, was
waiting outside the arena, ready to snatch the prize when we should have
disabled one another, From a dream of Bruhl and myself as engaged in
a competition for the king's favour, wherein neither could expose the
other nor appeal even in the last resort to the joint-enemies of his
Majesty and ourselves, I awoke to a very different state of things; I
awoke to find those enemies the masters of the situation, possessed of
the clue to our plans, and permitting them only as long as they seemed
to threaten no serious peril to themselves.

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