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Had it been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men to the upper room, he would have remarked perhaps with surprise, since he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper that in proportion as they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a sneaking and awkward man who crossed the threshold.
"Use them if you please. Let them drink and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends and their line of conduct!" "So! that is your opinion, is it, Monsieur Basterga?" d'Albigny answered. "And with it I must go as I came! I am of no use here, it seems?"
No, for a silence fell on the room, while those who held the floor hastened to efface themselves against the wall, as if they at any rate had nothing to do with the fracas. And next moment Grio shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-stifled curse stood back. "What is this?" The same question in the same tone. This time the student saw whose voice it was had stayed Grio's arm.
With a sickening thud Grio's knife sank between the shoulders, a moment the body writhed in Basterga's herculean grip, then it sank lifeless to the floor. "Had you struck him, fool," Basterga muttered wrathfully, wiping a little blood from his sleeve, "as you wanted to strike him, he had squealed like a pig! Now 'tis the same, and no noise. Ha! Seize him!" He spoke too late.
I will baste you after another fashion! On guard! On guard, and " "What is this?" The voice stayed Grio's tongue and checked his foot in the very instant of assault. The student, watching his blade and awaiting the attack, was surprised to see his point waver and drop. Was it a trick, he wondered? A stratagem?
Then tell me this: the girl below who smacked your face a month back because you laid a hand upon her wrist, and who would have had you put to the door the same day how did I tame her? Can you answer me that?" Grio's face fell remarkably. "No, master," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "I grant it. I cannot. A wilder filly was never handled." "So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you!
But to parley with the Grand Duke's emissaries, and strive to get and give not, that was one thing; while to betray the town and deliver it tied and bound into the hands of its arch-enemy, was another and a far more weighty matter. One, too, to which in Grio's judgment and in the dark lanes of life he had seen and weighed many men the magistrate would never be brought.
The young man asked himself the question; and noted that beside Grio's left heel lay a piece of broken tile of a peculiar colour. The next moment he had an inspiration. He drew up his feet on the seat, drew his cloak over his head and affected to be asleep.
Claude's gloomy face he had not forgiven bade beware of him; and little save on the subject of Louis' disfigured cheek of which the most pointed questions could extract no explanation passed among them at table. But outward peace was preserved and a show of ease. Grio's brutal nature broke out once or twice when he had had wine; but discouraged by Basterga, he subsided quickly.
On that day it caught Claude's attention; and was he mistaken, or were the hands that, under cover of Grio's cloak, rested on the wall busy about something? In any case he must make up his mind whether he moved or stayed. For Grio was coming on again. Claude hesitated a moment. Then he determined to stay.
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