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Had he followed my advice," the stranger continued with an air of lofty arrogance, "he would have done so long ago." "M. d'Albigny," Basterga answered, spreading out his hands with an ironical gesture, "would prefer to dig mines under the Tour du Pin near the College, and under the Porte Neuve!
He paused at his door, and cast a haggard glance up and down; at the irregular line of gables which he had known from childhood, the steep, red roofs, the cobble pavement, the bakers' signs that hung here and there and with the wide eaves darkened the way; and he cursed all he saw in the frenzy of his rage. Let Basterga, Savoy, d'Albigny do their worst! What was it to him? Why should he move?
It is only when the fireworks are discovered and the mines opened and the engineers are flying for their lives that there is really an appearance of something." "And that is the answer I am to carry to the Grand Duke?" d'Albigny retorted in a tone which betrayed how deeply he resented such taunts at the lips of his inferior. "That is all you have to tell him?" Basterga was silent awhile.
"Of great use presently, of none now," Basterga replied with greater respect than he had hitherto exhibited. "Frankly, M. d'Albigny, they fear you and suspect you. He, rather than M. d'Albigny, is the helper I need at present." D'Albigny grunted, but it was evident that the other's boldness impressed him. "You think, then, that they suspect us?" he said. "How should they not? Tell me that.
"Was Rome built in a day? Or can Geneva be destroyed in a day?" Basterga retorted. "If I had my hand on it!" d'Albigny answered truculently, "the task would not take more than a day!" He was a Southern Frenchman and an ardent Catholic; an officer of high rank in the employ of Savoy; for the rest, proud, brave, and difficult. "Ay, but you have not your hand on it, M. d'Albigny!"
Face to face with d'Albigny, he had put a bold face on the difficulties which surrounded him: he had let no sign of doubt or uncertainty, no word of fear respecting the outcome escape him. But the moment he found himself at liberty, the critical situation of his affairs, if the Syndic refused to take the bait, recurred to his mind, and harassed him.
"But what of the discontented you were to bring to a head?" d'Albigny retorted, remembering with relief another head of complaint, on which he had been charged to deliver himself. "The old soldiers and rufflers whom the peace has left unemployed, and with whom the man Grio was to aid you? Surely waiting will not help you with them!
Then let him bring his troops and ladders and the rest of it the care whereof is your lordship's, not mine to a part of the walls which I will indicate, and he shall find the guards withdrawn, and Geneva at his feet." "The longest night? But that is some weeks distant," d'Albigny answered in a grumbling tone. Still it was evident that he was impressed by the precision of the other's promise.
"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?"
The writer proceeds to warn us that the Grand Duke's lieutenant, M. d'Albigny, has taken a house on the Italian side of the frontier, and is there constructing a huge petard on wheels which is to be dragged up to the gate " "With the ladders and rafts?" "They seem to belong to another scheme," Fabri said, as he turned back and conned the letter afresh. "With M. d'Albigny at the bottom of both?"
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