Читать книгу Orrain - S. Levett Yeats - Страница 12

Half-an-hour later, when I quitted the presence of the Queen, it was as one to whom the world was opening afresh, and in that brief interval I had felt and begun to understand the subtle intellect of Catherine, of the existence of which few as yet were aware.

In regard to the mission with which I was entrusted I am pledged to preserve silence. The people concerned in it are dead, and when I follow them the secret will go with me. Let it suffice for me to say that my task was such that a man of honour could accept, and that if I failed the preservation of my skin was my own affair, for help I would get from none. Hidden in the inner pocket of my vest was a dispatch to Montluc, the King's lieutenant in the South. In my hand I openly bore a letter, sealed with the palle of the Medici, and addressed in the Queen's own writing to the King. It was to be the means of my freeing the gates of Paris if difficulty arose, and how it did so I shall presently show.

I found my friends awaiting me, and Le Brusquet asked:

"Well, have you come forth a made man?"

"Monsieur, I will answer you that," I said with assumed gravity, "if you will tell me who betrayed me to the Queen."

I looked from one to the other, and they both laughed.

"Behold the traitor, then!" And Le Brusquet pointed with his finger at me.