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Updated: May 11, 2025
Blondel had met Gentilis more than once, and marked him; and the lad's weak chin and shifty eyes, no less than the servility with which he saluted the magistrate had not been lost on the observer. The youth, granted he was not under Basterga's thumb, was unlikely to refuse a request backed by authority.
Men who sleep ill of nights, and take the cock-crow for war's alarum, are suspicious, and, once roused, without ruth or mercy. There was the joint in his harness. Once let his name be published with Basterga's, as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl spoke out and no one could say where the matter might end, or what suspicions might not be awakened.
But when, obedient to Basterga's eye, the girl moved to Gentilis' side and bent her cheek which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the coming kisses, but of Claude's presence and his cry for her he could not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and snatched his cap, and tore open the door.
At these times he longed for Basterga's throat; and the blood of old Enguerrande de Beauvais, his ancestor, dust these four hundred years at "Damietta of the South," raced in him, and he choked with rage and grief, and for the time could scarcely see. Yet with this pulse of wrath were mingled delicious thrills. The tear which she did not hide from him was his gage of love.
There the Syndic set down the lamp, and turned to the scholar, his face a picture of guilty terror. "What is it?" he muttered. "What has happened? Is the thing put off?" The other's aspect answered his question. A black corselet with shoulder pieces, and a feathered steel cap raised Basterga's huge stature almost to the gigantic.
"Ay, for schoolboys! And such as have no palate save for pap!" Claude being young took the thrust a little to heart. He returned it with a boy's impertinence. "We none of us grow thin on it," he said with a glance at the other's bulk. Basterga's eyes gleamed. "Grease and dish-washings," he exclaimed. And then, as if he knew where he could most easily wound his antagonist, he turned to the girl.
It was too late to move then three paces divided the men; but, in his haste to raise the pistol, Blondel had not shaken from it the handkerchief under which he had hidden it, and the lock fell on a morsel of the stuff. The next moment Basterga's huge hand struck aside the useless weapon, and flung Blondel gasping against the wall.
Blondel shook his head. "Or Messer Baudichon?" "I called him but now a fat hog!" It was Basterga's turn to shake his head. "He is not one to forget," he said gravely. "I fear you will hear of that again, Messer Blondel. I fear it will make trouble for you. But if these will not, is there any man in Geneva, any man you can name, who would give his life for you?" "Do men give life so easily?"
Then he recalled Basterga's threats, the Syndic's face, the departure of Louis and Grio; and his heart sank as lead sinks. The rumour so quickly spread by what hints, what innuendoes, what cunning inquiries, what references to the old, invisible, bedridden woman, he could but guess that rumour bore witness to a malice and a thirst for revenge which were not likely to stop at words.
He reflected a moment, considering whether he had forgotten anything: then, muttering that he would convey Basterga's views to the Grand Duke, he pulled his cloak more closely about his face, and with a curt nod of farewell, he turned on his heel and was gone.
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