“I shall have to come to your terms, I suppose, _mon père_,” he said at last with an effort to appear congenial. “That is more to the point,” Père Ambroise remarked pleasantly, and leaned over to fill his guest’s glass again. While these two worthies talked and drank, a very different scene was being enacted in the second story of the house. Here, in a large back room, Rosaline and Babet were confined; the woman sitting stiffly upright in a chair by the table, where the candles were set, while Rosaline had thrown herself face downward on the bed, in a silent agony of grief and despair. Between the two was the black poodle Truffe, her ears pointed, silent and watchful after the fashion of dogs in new places. Babet ventured upon no consolation; she stared grimly before her with unwinking eyes. She was thinking of her own fate; there was no one to interpose for her, and her destiny was probably the Tour de Constance. She tried to recall all she had heard of this fearful prison at Aiguemortes, of the malarious swamps about it, of the smells that arose at low tide, of the hideous cruelties practised in its loathsome dungeons, of the sick and dying, whose bodies were denied decent burial. Grim and strong as old Babet was, her cheek blanched at the thought, and, for the moment, she forgot even her ewe-lamb. (The most unselfish soul must fight its own battle sometime, to the exclusion of all else.) Meanwhile Rosaline lay there with her face hidden on her arms; her grandmother’s death had bereaved her of one who might have remained with her, helping her to endure her lot, for she hoped for no release; she must purchase her lover’s liberty and life at the expense of her own happiness. M. de Baudri had taken care to remind her that he still held the fate of François d’Aguesseau in his hand, and she knew that the sacrifice must still be made. If François divined it, he would refuse his life at such a cost,--that she knew; but he would never know, he might even think her false and lightly won! But all these things were small compared with the alternative; it was not for her to send him to the gallows, or worse, to make him a galley slave, that she might escape M. de Baudri. Again she shuddered at the thought of her fate; the lowest dungeons of the Tour de Constance would be heaven compared with such a marriage! She shrank from it as all pure women shrink from any marriage that is not founded on the highest and purest motives. Her very flesh rebelled against her spirit, and she lay there shivering, like one stricken with ague. Yet strong is love; she must save him, and then, oh, she prayed the _bon Dieu_ to release her!