The Snowball Read Free Page A

face. For a moment he hesitated. Then in a hurried
manner he said that he had never seen the paper.
    "Come," I rejoined sternly, "look at it again. Let there be no
mistake. When did you write that, and why?"
    But still he shook his head; and, though I pressed him hard, continued
so stubborn in his denial that, but for the look I had seen on his
face when I first produced the paper, and the strange coincidence of
his dismissal, I might have believed him. As it was, I saw nothing for
it but to have him arrested and brought to my house, where I did not
doubt he would tell the truth; and I was about to retire to give the
necessary orders, when something in the sidelong glance I saw him cast
at his wife caught my eye and furnished me with a new idea. Acting on
this, I affected to be satisfied. I apologized for my intrusion on the
ground of mistake, and gradually withdrawing to the door asked him at
the last moment to light me downstairs.
    Complying with a shaking hand, he went out before me, and had nearly
reached the foot of the staircase when I touched him on the shoulder.
    "Now," I said bluntly, fixing him with my eyes, "your wife is no
longer listening, and you can tell me the truth. Who employed you to
write these words?"
    Trembling so violently he had to lean on the balustrade for support,
he answered me.
    "Madame Nicholas," he whispered.
    "What?" I cried, recoiling. I had no doubt he was telling me the truth
now.
    "The secretary's wife, do you mean? Be careful, man."
    He nodded.
    "When?" I asked suspiciously.
    "Yesterday," he answered. "She is an old cat!" he continued, almost
fiercely. "I hate her! But my wife is jealous."
    "And did you throw it into my coach," I said, "on the Pont du Change,
to-day?"
    "God forbid!" he replied, shrinking into himself again. "I wrote it
for her, and she took it away. She said it was a jest she was playing.
That is all I know."
    I saw it was, and after a few more words was content to dismiss him,
bidding him keep silence on the matter, and remain at home in case I
needed him. At the last, he plucked up spirit to ask me who I was; but
preferring to keep that discovery for a day still to come, when I
might appear as the benefactor of this little family, I told him
sharply that I was one of the King's servants, and so left him.
    It will be believed, however, that I found the information I had
received little to my mind. The longer I dwelt on it, the more serious
seemed the matter. While I could scarcely conceive any circumstances
in which a woman would be likely to inform against her husband without
cause, I could recall more than one dangerous conspiracy which had
been frustrated by informers of that class—sometimes out of regard
for the very persons against whom they informed. Viewed in this light
only, the warning seemed to my mind sufficiently alarming, but when I
came also to consider the secrecy with which Madame Nicholas had both
prepared it—so that her hand might not be known—and conveyed it to
me, the aspect of the case grew yet more formidable. In the result, I
had not passed through two streets before my mind was made up to lay
the case before the King, and the sagacity and penetration which were
never wanting to my gracious master.
    An unexpected rencontre which awaited me on my return to the Arsenal
both confirmed me in this resolution and enabled me to carry it into
effect. We succeeded in slipping in without difficulty, and duly found
Maignan on guard at the door of my apartments. But a single glance at
his face sufficed to show that something was wrong; nor did it need
the look of penitence which he assumed on seeing us—a look so piteous
that at another time it must have diverted me—to convince me that he
had infringed my orders.
    "How now, sirrah?" I said angrily, without waiting for him to speak.
"What have you been doing?"
    "They would take no refusal, Monseigneur," he answered plaintively,
waving his hand toward the door.
    "What!" I cried sternly, astonished; for