Blondel stood up. "Whether I am a traitor?" he said, in a tone of fury; and he extended his arms in protest. "Whether I am in league with this Italian, I, Philibert Blondel of Geneva? That is what you ask, what you wish to know! Whether I sought him yesterday in the hope of worming his secrets from him, and doing what I could for the benefit of the State in a matter too delicate to be left to underlings? Or went there, one with him, to betray my country? To sell the Free City? That--that is what you ask?"
His passion was full, overpowering, convincing; so convincing--it almost stopped his speech--that he believed in it himself, so convincing that it swept away all but his steady and professed opponents. "No, no!" cried a dozen voices, in tones that reflected his indignation. "No, no! Shame!"
"No?" Blondel took up the word, his eyes sparkling, his adust complexion heated and full of fire. "But it is--yes, they say! Yes, they say whom you have to thank if we have lost our clue, they who met me going to him but yesterday and threatened me! Threatened me!" he repeated, in a voice of astonishment. "Me, who desired only, sought only, was going only to do my duty! 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. If any man can be trusted to sound the enemy, it is I! But I have done! Had Messer Baudichon not pressed me to issue the warrant, not driven me beyond my patience, it had not been issued yesterday. It had been in the office, and the man within the walls! Ay, and not only within the walls, but fresh from a conference with the Sieur d'Albigny, primed with all we need to know, and in doubt by which side he could most profit!"
"It was about that you saw him?" Petitot said slowly, his eyes fixed like gimlets to the other's face.
"It was about that I saw him," Blondel answered. "And I think in a few hours more I had won him. But in the street he had some secret word or warning; for when I handed the warrant--against my better sense--to the officers, they, who had never lost sight of him between gate and gate, answered that he had crossed the bridge and left the town an hour before. Mon Dieu!"--he struck his two hands together and snapped his teeth--"when I think how foolish I was to be over-ridden, I could--I could say more, Messer Baudichon"--with a saturnine look--"than I said yesterday!"