'

'Yes, I,' he answered, with abominable coolness. 'I, priest, monk,
Churchman, clerk. You look surprised, but mark you, sir, there is a
change going on. Our time is coming, and yours is going. What hampers
our lord the king and shuts him up in Blois, while rebellions stalk
through France? Lack of men? No; but lack of money. Who can get the
money for him--you the soldier, or I the clerk? A thousand times, I!
Therefore, my time is coming, and before you die you will see a priest
rule France.'

'God forbid it should be you,' I answered scornfully.

'As you please,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders, and assuming in
a breath a mask of humility which sat as ill on his monstrous conceit
as ever nun's veil on a trooper. 'Yet it may even be I; by the favour of
the Holy Catholic Church, whose humble minister I am.'

I sprang up with a great oath at that, having no stomach for more of the
strange transformations, in which this man delighted, and whereof the
last had ever the air of being the most hateful. 'You villain!' I cried,
twisting my moustaches, a habit I have when enraged. 'And so you would
make me a stepping-stone to your greatness. You would bribe me--a
soldier and a gentleman. Go, before I do you a mischief. That is all
I have to say to you. Go! You have your answer. I will tell you
nothing--not a jot or a tittle. Begone from my room!'

He fell back a step in his surprise, and stood against the table biting
his nails and scowling at me, fear and chagrin contending with half a
dozen devils for the possession of his face. 'So you have been deceiving
me,' he said slowly, and at last.

'I have let you deceive yourself' I answered, looking at him with scorn,
but with little of the fear with which he had for a while inspired me.
'Begone, and do your worst.'

'You know what you are doing,' he said. 'I have that will hang you, M.
de Marsac--or worse.'

'Go!' I cried.

'You have thought of your friends,' he continued mockingly.

'Go!' I said.

'Of Mademoiselle de la Vire, if by any chance she fall into my hands?
It will not be hanging for her. You remember the two Foucauds?'--and he
laughed.

The vile threat, which I knew he had used to my mother, so worked upon
me that I strode forward unable to control myself longer. In another
moment I had certainly taken him by the throat and squeezed the life out
of his miserable carcase, had not Providence in its goodness intervened
to save me. The door, on which he h