"Have I not been plain enough?" he answered with a snarl.
I realised to the full my unenviable position, and with the realisation of
it there overcame me the recklessness of him who has played his last stake
at the tables and lost. That recklessness it was that caused me to shrug
my shoulders with a laugh. I was a soldier of fortune--or should I say a
soldier of misfortune?--as rich in vice as I was poor in virtue; a man who
lived by the steel and parried the blows that came as best he might, or
parried them not at all--but never quailed.
"As your Eminence pleases," I answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for
one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little
clemency were not unfitting."
He raised his eyebrows, and his lips curled in a malicious sneer.
"You come of a family, M. de Luynes," he said slowly, "that is famed for
having shed the blood of others for France more freely than its own. You
are, I believe, the nephew of Albert de Luynes. Do you forget the Marshal
d'Ancre?"
I felt the blood of anger hot in my face as I made haste to answer him:
"There are many of us, Monseigneur, who have cause to blush for the
families they spring from--more cause, mayhap, than hath Gaston de Luynes.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29