King sent after me from Madrid—have pillaged me of all. Some day I will pay his Majesty for the outrage—let him beware lest I place Austria back upon his throne. 'Twas a beggarly trick!—to take my carriages and mules, my jewels and wealth—even the will of the late King, which was most lawfully and rightfully in my possession."
"What!" broke from several of our lips, "what!" while from Marcieu's white and trembling ones came the words, "The late King's will! It is impossible. This girl—this lady—has handed it to me!"
For a moment the Cardinal's sly glance rested on the Princess, then on Marcieu, and then—then—he actually laughed, not loud, but long.
"Monsieur," he said at last, "you are a poor spy—easily to be tricked. You will never make a living at the calling. The will that lady gave you was a duplicate, a copy. It was meant that you should have that—that it should fall into your stupid hands. And, had I not been robbed on the other side of the mountains, you would not have seen me here."
"It is so," the Princess said, striding up to where the chevalier stood; "it is so. You spy! you spy! you mouchard! if that worthless piece of paper in the red ball had been the real will, I would have perished in the burning house before letting it fall into your hands." Then, sinking her voice still lower, though not so low but that some of us could hear what she said, she went on: "Have a care for your future. The followers of Austria have still some power left, even at the Court of France. Your threat to let me burn on the roof was not unmeant. It will be remembered."
And now there is no more to tell, except that the Princess knew that Marcieu meant to take the real will from the Cardinal if he met him, and so it had been arranged that, through her, the paper which he would suppose was that real will was to fall into his hands, and
