I reflected that the talents which in such a garb could win the respect of M.Francois d'Agen--a brilliant star among the younger courtiers, and one of a class much given to thinking scorn of their fathers' roughness--must be both great and formidable; and, so considering, I received the monk with a distant courtesy which I had once little thought to extend to him.

I put aside for the moment the private grudge I bore him with so much justice, and remembered only the burden which lay on me in my contest with him.
I conjectured without difficulty that he chose to come at this time, when M.Francois was with me, out of a cunning regard to his own safety; and I was not surprised when M.Francois, beginning to make his adieux, Father Antoine begged him to wait below, adding that he had something of importance to communicate.

He advanced his request in terms of politeness bordering on humility; but I could clearly see that, in assenting to it, M.d'Agen bowed to a will stronger than his own, and would, had he dared to follow his own bent, have given a very different answer.

As it was he retired--nominally to give an order to his lackey--with a species of impatient self-restraint which it was not difficult to construe.
Left alone with me, and assured that we had no listeners, the monk was not slow in coming to the point.
'You have thought over what I told you last night ?' he said brusquely, dropping in a moment the suave manner which he had maintained in M.
Francois's presence.
I replied coldly that I had.
'And you understand the position ?' he continued quickly, looking at me from under his brows as he stood before me, with one clenched fist on the table.

'Or shall I tell you more?
Shall I tell you how poor and despised you were some weeks ago, M.de Marsac--you who now go in velvet, and have three men at your back?
Or whose gold it is has brought you here, and made you, this?
Chut! Do not let us trifle.