ce to communicate. He advanced his request in terms of
politeness bordering on humility; but I could clearly see that, in
assenting to it, M. d'Agen bowed to a will stronger than his own, and
would, had he dared to follow his own bent, have given a very different
answer. As it was he retired--nominally to give an order to his
lackey--with a species of impatient self-restraint which it was not
difficult to construe.

Left alone with me, and assured that we had no listeners, the monk was
not slow in coming to the point.

'You have thought over what I told you last night?' he said brusquely,
dropping in a moment the suave manner which he had maintained in M.
Francois's presence.

I replied coldly that I had.

'And you understand the position?' he continued quickly, looking at me
from under his brows as he stood before me, with one clenched fist on
the table. 'Or shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how poor and
despised you were some weeks ago, M. de Marsac--you who now go in
velvet, and have three men at your back? Or whose gold it is has brought
you here, and made you, this? Chut! Do not let us trifle. You are here
as the secret agent of the King of Navarre. It is my business to learn
your plans and his intentions, and I propose to do so.'

'Well?' I said.

'I am prepared to buy them,' he answered; and his eyes sparkled as he
spoke, with a greed which set me yet more on my guard.

'For whom?' I asked. Having made up my mind that I must use the same
weapons as my adversary, I reflected that to express indignation, such
as might become a young man new to the world, could, help me not a whit.
'For whom?' I repeated, seeing that he hesitated.

'That is my business,' he replied slowly.

'You want to know too much and tell too little,' I retorted, yawning.

'And you are playing with me,' he cried, looking at me suddenly, with so
piercing a gaze and so dark a countenance that I checked a shudder with
difficulty. 'So much the worse for you, so much the worse for you!' he
continued fiercely. 'I am here to buy the information you hold, but if
you will not sell, there is another way. At an hour's notice I can ruin
your plans, and send you to a dungeon! You are like a fish caught in a
net not yet drawn. It thrusts its nose this way and that, and touches
the mesh, but is slow to take the alarm until the net is drawn--and then
it is too late. So it is with you, and so it is,' he added, falling
into the ecstatic mood whi