"You will answer for him, madame?" he said.
"Oh, with my life!" cried the duchess.
He softly kissed his apprentice on the forehead, and, wrapping his cloak about him, stalked proudly from the room, with his hand upon his dagger, not without exchanging a glance of hatred and disdain with the duchess. As for the two men, he did not deign to look at them.
Anne followed her enemy so long as she could see him with eyes blazing with wrath; then, with an entire change of expression, her eyes rested sadly and anxiously upon the comely invalid; love took the place of anger, the tigress became a gazelle once more.
"Master André," she said to her physician, who entered hurriedly, "save him; he is wounded and dying."
"It is nothing," said Master André, "a mere passing weakness."
He poured upon Ascanio's lips a few drops of a cordial which he always carried about him.
"He is coming to himself," cried the duchess, "he moved. Now, master, he must be kept quiet, must he not? Take him into yonder room," she said to the valets, "and lay him upon a couch.—But, hark ye," she added, lowering her voice, so that none but they could hear: "if one word escapes you as to what you have seen and heard, your neck shall pay for your tongue. Go."
The trembling lackeys bowed, and, gently lifting Ascanio, bore him away.
Remaining alone with the provost and the Vicomte de Marmagne, prudent and passive spectators of the outrage upon her, Madame d'Etampes eyed them both, especially the latter, with a scornful glance, but she speedily repressed the inclination to express her contempt in words.