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Updated: June 1, 2025
"You have scored his face pretty fairly," Baudichon muttered. "To score his back too " "Were nothing for the offence! Nothing! As you would say if you knew it," Blondel panted. "Indeed?" "Ay." "Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?" "He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered more soberly than he had yet spoken.
What do you say, Messer Baudichon?" "Messer Blondel knows the man," Baudichon answered drily. "He is, therefore, the best judge." Blondel reddened. "I see you are determined to lay the responsibility on me," he cried. "The responsibility is on you already!" Petitot retorted. "You have decided. I trust it may turn out as you expect." "And as you do not expect!"
That hasty word had revealed to the speaker a lack of self-control that terrified him, even as it had revealed to Baudichon a glimpse of something underneath the Fourth Syndic's dry exterior that might well set a man thinking as well as talking. This matter Blondel saw plainly he must deal with at once, or it might do harm.
One moment, if you please!" Blondel stopped and turned to him. Outwardly the Syndic was cool, inwardly he was at a white heat that at any moment might impel him to the wildest action. "Well?" he said. "What is it, M. Baudichon?" "I want to know " "Of course!" The sneer was savage and undisguised. "What, this time, if I may be so bold?"
"I think, therefore, that it will be well, to leave it to Messer Blondel. He is responsible for the safety of the city, and it should be for him to say what is to be done." "Yes, yes," several voices agreed. "Leave it to Messer Blondel." "You assent to that, Messer Baudichon?" "I suppose so," the councillor muttered reluctantly. "Very good," said Fabri.
On his right stood Blandano, Captain of the Guard, bareheaded and black with powder; on his left Baudichon the councillor, panting, breathless, his fat face running with sweat and blood for he bore an ugly wound but with unquenchable courage in his eyes. A man may be fat and yet a lion. It was a moment in the lives of the five men who thus met which none of them ever forgot.
"If I live to see the morning light, it shall not be forgotten!" Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude's hand. "For the women and children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no man had fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to see the morning inquire for Baudichon of the council."
I used, I admit the fault," he allowed his voice to drop to a tone more like his own, "words on that occasion that I now regret. But is blood water? Does no man besides Councillor Baudichon love his country? Is the suspicion, the open suspicion of such an one, no insult, that he must cavil if he be repaid in insult? I have given my proofs.
Baudichon breathed quickly, partly with the haste he had made across the road, partly in irritation at the gibe. "This only," he said. "How far you purpose to try our patience? A week ago you were for delaying the arrest you know of for a day. It was a matter of hours then." "It was." "But days have passed, and are passing! and we have no explanation; nothing is done.
What are you plotting together?" She knew as much as that, did she? She knew that they were one, and that they were plotting together; while in the Council men were clamouring for the Paduan's arrest, and were growing suspicious because he was not arrested Baudichon, whom he had called a fat hog, and Petitot, that slow, plodding sleuth-hound of a patriot.
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