behind a hedge might cut your career short. It is probable enough
that you are watched, and in that case I should doubt whether you
would ever get to la Villar, nor do I think that if you left for
the Rhine you would get halfway. Now you see, Monsieur Campbell,
that your cause is mine, and that your safety touches me as if it
were my own, for it was in my service that you incurred the danger.
I must think the matter over. In the meantime I beg of you to sleep
here tonight. I will send word to your servant that you will not
return. I could of course send a guard with you to your hotel,
but some of the servants there may have been bribed to murder you
as you slept. I can look after myself; I seldom leave the house
except to go to the Louvre, and I never go even that short distance
without a guard, but it is much more difficult to protect you."

"I have my own bodyguard, your excellency -- four stout Scotch
soldiers and my lackey, Paolo, who is a good swordsman also; and
as it does not seem to me that I should be safer elsewhere than
here, I shall at any rate stay for a time. I should imagine that
the warning was a general one. They have just found out that I
had a hand in thwarting their plot against you, and I dare say used
threats; but the threats of angry men come very often to nothing;
and at any rate, I do not choose that they should obtain the
satisfaction of driving me from Paris against my will."

The cardinal shook his head. "You see, monsieur, that Beaufort is
a man who hesitates at nothing. A scrupulous person would hardly
endeavour to slay a cardinal, who is also the minister of France,
in the streets of Paris in broad daylight. He is capable of burning
down the Pome d'Or, and all within it, in order to obtain revenge
on you. I feel very uneasy about you. However, sleep may bring