hts. I
struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's
face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before
them. Some confusion--for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning;
yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim
visage, still speaking in the same rough tone. "Listen, M. de
Pavannes," he continued, rising to his full height and waving his hand
with a certain majesty towards the window--no one had spoken. "The
doors are open! Your mistress is at Caylus. The road is clear, go to
her; go to her, and tell her that I have saved your life, and that I
give it to you not out of love, but out of hate! If you had flinched I
would have killed you, for so you would have suffered most, M. de
Pavannes. As it is, take your life--a gift! and suffer as I should if
I were saved and spared by my enemy!"

Slowly the full sense of his words came home to me. Slowly; not in its
full completeness indeed until I heard Louis in broken phrases, phrases
half proud and half humble, thanking him for his generosity. Even then
I almost lost the true and wondrous meaning of the thing when I heard
his answer. For he cut Pavannes short with bitter caustic gibes,
spurned his proffered gratitude with insults, and replied to his
acknowledgments with threats.

"Go! go!" he continued to cry violently. "Have I brought you so far
safely that you will cheat me of my vengeance at the last, and provoke
me to kill you? Away! and take these blind puppies with you! Reckon
me as much your enemy now as ever! And if I meet you, be sure you will
meet a foe! Begone, M. de Pavannes, begone!"

"But, M. de Bezers," Louis persisted, "hear me. It takes two to--"

"Begone! begone! before we do one another a mischief!" cried the
Vidame furiously. "Every word you say in that strain is an injury to
me. It robs me of my vengeance. Go! in God's name!"

And we went; for there was no change, no promise of softening in his
malignant aspect as he spoke; nor any as he stood and watched us draw
off slowly from him. We went one by one, each lingering after the
other, striving, out of a natural desire to thank him, to break through
that stern reserve. But grim and unrelenting, a picture of scorn to
the last, he saw us go.

My latest memory of that strange man--still fresh after a lapse of two
and fifty years--is of a huge form towering in the gloom below the
state canopy, the sunlight which