He went white as snow and red as fire by turns, as he paced the apartment in a frenzy.

Never in the fifteen years that were sped since he had been raised to the governorship of the province had any man taken such a tone with him and harangued him in such terms.
A liar and a traitor had he been called that morning, a knave and a fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose.
Dame! What manner of cur was he become?
And the man who had done all this--a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the barrack-room still lived! Bloodshed was in his mind; murder beckoned him alluringly to take her as his ally.

But he put the thought from him, frenzied though he might be.
He must fight this knave with other weapons; frustrate his mission, and send him back to Paris and the Queen's scorn, beaten and empty-handed.
"Babylas's!" he shouted.
Immediately the secretary appeared.
"Have you given thought to the matter of Captain d'Aubran ?" he asked, his voice an impatient snarl.
"Yes, monsieur, I have pondered it all morning." "Well?
And what have you concluded ?" "Helas! monsieur, nothing." Tressan smote the table before him a blow that shook some of the dust out of the papers that cumbered it.

"Ventregris! How am I served?
For what do I pay you, and feed you, and house you, good-for-naught, if you are to fail me whenever I need the things you call your brains?
Have you no intelligence, no thought, no imagination?
Can you invent no plausible business, no likely rising, no possible disturbances that shall justify my sending Aubran and his men to Montelimar--to the very devil, if need be." The secretary trembled in his every limb; his eyes shunned his master's as his master's had shunned Garnache's awhile ago.

The Seneschal was enjoying himself.