ll to get rid of this young D'Effiat, and that I would
charge myself with the business, if such were his good pleasure. It would
be easy to destroy him in the opinion of the King."

"It would be safer to make him die of his wound," answered Laubardemont;
"if his Eminence would have the goodness to command me, I know intimately
the assistant-physician, who cured me of a blow on the forehead, and is
now attending to him. He is a prudent man, entirely devoted to
Monseigneur the Cardinal-Duke, and whose affairs have been somewhat
embarrassed by gambling."

"I believe," replied Joseph, with an air of modesty, mingled with a touch
of bitterness, "that if his Excellency proposed to employ any one in this
useful project, it should be his accustomed negotiator, who has had some
success in the past."

"I fancy that I could enumerate some signal instances," answered
Laubardemont, "and very recent ones, of which the difficulty was great."

"Ah, no doubt," said the father, with a bow and an air of consideration
and politeness, "your most bold and skilfully executed commission was the
trial of Urbain Grandier, the magician. But, with Heaven's assistance,
one may be enabled to do things quite as worthy and bold. It is not
without merit, for instance," added he, dropping his eyes like a young
girl, "to have extirpated vigorously a royal Bourbon branch."

"It was not very difficult," answered the magistrate, with bitterness,
"to select a soldier from the guards to kill the Comte de Soissons; but
to preside, to judge--"

"And to execute one's self," interrupted the heated Capuchin, "is
certainly less difficult than to educate a man from infancy in the
thought of accomplishing great things with discretion, and to bear all
tortures, if necessary, for the love of heaven, rather than reveal the
name of those who have armed him with their justice, or to die
courageously upon the body of him that he has struck, as did one who was
commissioned by me. He uttered no cry at the blow of the sword of
Riquemont, the equerry of the Prince. He died like a saint; he was my
pupil."

"To give orders is somewhat different from running risk one's self."

"And did I risk nothing at the siege of Rochelle?"

"Of being drowned in a sewer, no doubt," said Laubardemont.

"And you," said Joseph, "has your danger been that of catching your
fingers in instruments of torture? And all this because the Abbess of the
Ursulines is your niece."

"It was a goo