Now Boucher felt for the first time in his life that he had met the
better man. The great duelist who had ruffled it so grandly through the
inns and streets of Paris looked with growing terror into the stern,
accusing eyes that confronted him. But he did not always see Willet. It
was the ghosts of the boy, Gaston Lafitte, of the sick man Raoul de
Bassempierre and of the indifferent swordsman, Raymond de Neville, that
guided the hunter's blade, and his forehead became cold and wet with
perspiration.
De Galisonniere had moved in the crowd, until he stood with Robert and
Tayoga. He was perhaps the only one of the _honnetes gens_ in the
garden, and while he was a Frenchman, first, last and all the time, he
knew who Boucher was and what he represented, he understood the reason
why Robert had been drawn into the garden and he was willing to see the
punishment of the man who was to have been the sanguinary instrument of
the plot.
"A miracle will defeat the best of plans," he said to de Courcelles.
"What do you mean, de Galisonniere?" asked de Courcelles with a show of
effrontery.
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