“Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!” Count Hannibal answered coolly.  “If it would, he would die!  But it will not; and we must even do again as we have done.  I have spared him—­he’s a white-livered hound!—­both once and twice, and we must go to the end with it since no better can be!  I have thought it out, and it must be.  Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where I can reach it.  And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her silk glove again—­to put in her bosom!”—­with a grimace and a sudden reddening of his harsh features—­“if master priest come within reach of my arm, I’ll send him before me, where I go.”

“Ay, ay!” said Badelon.  “And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail of mine!  I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes!  I shall be there!”

“You?”

“Ay, why not?” the old man answered quietly.  “I may halt on this leg for aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage under the Chatelet.”

“Bah, man, you will get a new lord!”

Badelon nodded.  “Ay, a new lord with new ways!” he answered slowly and thoughtfully.  “And I am tired.  They are of another sort, lords now, than they were when I was young.  It was a word and a blow then.  Now I am old, with most it is—­’Old hog, your distance!  You scent my lady!’ Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and summer or winter heard the lark sing.  Now they are curled, and paint themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies—­who shamed to be seen at Court or board when I was a boy—­and love better to hear the mouse squeak than the lark sing.”

“Still, if I give you my gold chain,” Count Hannibal answered quietly, “’twill keep you from that.”

“Give it to Bigot,” the old man answered.  The splint he was fashioning had fallen on his knees, and his eyes were fixed on the distance of his youth.  “For me, my lord, I am tired, and I go with you.  I go with you.  It is a good death to die biting before the strength be quite gone.  Have the dagger too, if you please, and I’ll fit it within the splint right neatly.  But I shall be there—­”

“And you’ll strike home?” Tavannes cried eagerly.  He raised himself on his elbow, a gleam of joy in his gloomy eyes.

“Have no fear, my lord.  See, does it tremble?” He held out his hand.  “And when you are sped, I will try the Spanish stroke—­upwards with a turn ere you withdraw, that I learned from Ruiz—­on the shaven pate.  I see them about me now!” the old man continued, his face flushing, his form dilating.  “It will be odd if I cannot snatch a sword and hew down three to go with Tavannes!  And Bigot, he will see my lord the Marshal by-and-by; and as I do to the priest, the Marshal will do to Montsoreau.  Ho! ho!  He will teach him the coup de Jarnac, never fear!” And the old man’s moustaches curled up ferociously.