"Then there is hope yet!" I cried. "Surely surely, he will move the King to mercy----" But Monseigneur, holding up his hand, waved away the hope. "He has tried already, tried time and again, and failed. He even threatened to withhold absolution, and the King turned on him like a beast rather than a man. 'Away with you! away! away!' he cried. 'Your prayers were to prolong my life, and yet what am I? Is this--miserable that I am!--is this all your prayer can wring out of the Lord God? If you cannot save the lesser thing of the body, how can you damn the greater soul? Curse, if you must curse, but this Hellewyl dies.'" "And yet," said I dully, "he moved the King to spare the woman." "Louis has his own code of law. By it de Helville's return absolved the woman, and so in that case the monk prevailed. But no power can move him for de Helville. I pled with him, knelt to him, almost wept; prayed that if ever he owed me anything for all my eleven years of labour to pay it now in this one man's life. His only answer was a scoff, and that as I had betrayed Burgundy for pay eleven years ago, so now I would betray France. 'It was you,' he added, 'who put this milk-souled boor of a Fleming into my head, and by God! I have a mind to hang you alongside him as a warning to all fools as well as rogues.' Move him! Not Gabriel, not Michael, not the whole hierarchy of heaven would move him. He cries it is but Justice--Justice, and de Helville was arrested in Poictiers last night." "I know, I know, but what came next?" "At daybreak this morning the express reached Plessis, and by Louis' orders the news was at once brought to him. I was with him at the time; all night I have never left him. But when I would have spoken he shook his finger at me, and laid his hand upon the collar with the Cross of Saint Lo. 'Dawn on Sunday,' he whispered to Lesellè. He is so weak, Mademoiselle, pitiably weak in the flesh, but the will and the spirit are as strong as ever. 'Dawn on Sunday. That day the saints draw nearer to us, and I would not kill the soul with the body. Hang him at dawn, Lesellè.'" "And this man is himself dying!" I cried. "Dying, Mademoiselle?" said Commines. "Who said he was dying? I know that even in Plessis there are those who waver, and would fly to Charles if they dared; but--dying? No! no! It would be the ruin of France." "Oh, Monseigneur! what do I care for the ruin of France? Dawn on Sunday! Gaspard! Gaspard! not two days! Monsieur de Commines, I must see the King." "The King? You?" he answered brusquely. "No, no; how could you see him?" "Your King is not so great but Suzanne de Narbonne might be received." "I know, Mademoiselle, I know; but it is precisely because you are Suzanne de Narbonne. Why destroy yourself? Your very name is fatal." "Do you think, Monsieur, that if I were afraid for myself I would have ridden from Poictiers last night? He need not know my name."