"By God, you will!" he burst out with volcanic fury, "no, no; I am too hot. We can lose them; tell Serigny they were never found; tell him Yvard carried them off; tell him he never had them. We can fix a tale." "It would be a long story, and a liar must needs have a good memory." I was playing for time, time to think, time to get away. "But I will go with you to Serigny," he insisted, "tell the lie and make him to believe. 'Pshaw, man, you know not the ways of the world, at least not at the Court of France." "Think, Jerome, of the war, of our people in the colonies, of our honor?" "I care not for it all," the wild passion in his voice made me almost fear him. "All that is as nothing to me where Celeste is concerned. Oh, Placide, think of it! I love her, love her, love her--do you comprehend what that means to such a man as I? I, who have loved her almost from her birth, have seen her taken from me and sold--yes, sold by her money-loving father, sold, sold! I, who have borne all her husband's leers when, flushed with the insolence of rank and wine, this shriveled bridegroom bore her as a piece of ornament to his house in Paris. Can I bear to lose her now? "But, Jerome, you would not be such a coward as to permit our brethren in the colonies to be slaughtered, while you tell your pitiful lie to shield a woman? It can not be done. What a fool you are come to be. Man, man, where is your courage?" "I care not. Love for such a woman would make of Truth a liar, and of Jove a fool. Think, Placide, think of her, Celeste, in the Bastille, the irons cutting into her delicate hands, those hands which I have so fondly held within my own--the cold stones for her bed. Or, worse: The block, the headsman and the jeering rabble. Have you no feeling, man? Suppose there was some woman whom you loved--a guilty love, I grant--but so strong, so deep, so overpowering, you could not master it? Suppose _she_ were threatened, would you not protect her even if you lost your life; yea, bartered away your honor?" A pale little tearful face thrust itself before me as he spoke, and I knew my own weak heart. I confess his pleading staggered me, and I hesitated. He came closer; all the love and fear of a strong and desperate man wove itself into his words.