“Say your prayers, child of Satan!” cried the leader, waving his weapon.  “We give you one minute!”

“Ay, one minute!” his followers chimed in.  “Be ready!”

“You would murder me?” he said with dignity.  And when they shouted assent, “Good!” he answered.  “It is between you and M. de Biron, whose guest I am.  But”—­with a glance which passed round the ring of glaring eyes and working features—­“I would leave a last word for some one.  Is there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King?  ’Tis for two men coming and going for a fortnight.”  And he held up a slip of paper.

The leader cried, “To hell with his safe-conduct!  Say your prayers!”

But all were not of his mind.  On one or two of the savage faces—­the faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their wrongs—­flashed an avaricious gleam.  A safe-conduct?  To avenge, to slay, to kill—­and to go safe!  For some minds such a thing has an invincible fascination.  A man thrust himself forward.

“Ay, I’ll have it!” he cried.  “Give it here!”

“It is yours,” Count Hannibal answered, “if you will carry ten words to Marshal Tavannes—­when I am gone.”

The man’s neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“And Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely,” he said.

But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand.

“If I take the message!” he muttered in a grim aside.  “Do you think me mad?” And then aloud he cried, “Ay, I’ll take your message!  Give me the paper.”

“You swear you will take it?”

The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and went forward.  The others would have pressed round too, half in envy, half in scorn; but Tavannes by a gesture stayed them.

“Gentlemen, I ask a minute only,” he said.  “A minute for a dying man is not much.  Your friends had as much.”

And the fellows, acknowledging the claim and assured that their victim could not escape, let Maudron go round the table to him.

The man was in haste and ill at ease, conscious of his evil intentions and the fraud he was practising; and at once greedy to have, yet ashamed of the bargain he was making.  His attention was divided between the slip of paper, on which his eyes fixed themselves, and the attitude of his comrades; he paid little heed to Count Hannibal, whom he knew to be unarmed.  Only when Tavannes seemed to ponder on his message, and to be fain to delay, “Go on,” he muttered with brutal frankness; “your time is up!”

Tavannes started, the paper slipped from his fingers.  Maudron saw a chance of getting it without committing himself, and quick as the thought leapt up in his mind he stooped, and grasped the paper, and would have leapt back with it!  But quick as he, and quicker, Tavannes too stooped, gripped him by the waist, and with a prodigious effort, and a yell in which all the man’s stormy nature, restrained to a part during the last few minutes, broke forth, he flung the ill-fated wretch head first through the window.