"Monseigneur!" "I know that you found D'Argenson there, and that he read your sentence." "Mon Dieu!" "I know that you are condemned to death, and that you were bound not to speak of it to any one." "Oh, monseigneur, silence! One word of this would kill Helene." "Be easy, monsieur; but let us see; is there no way of avoiding this execution?" "Days would be necessary to prepare and execute a plan of escape, and I scarcely have hours." "I do not speak of escape; I ask if you have no excuse to give for your crime?" "My crime!" cried Gaston, astonished to hear his accomplice use such a word. "Yes," replied the duke: "you know that men stigmatize murder with this name under all circumstances; but posterity often judges differently, and sometimes calls it a grand deed." "I have no excuse to give, monseigneur, except that I believe the death of the regent to be necessary to the salvation of France." "Yes," replied the duke, smiling; "but you will see that that is scarcely the excuse to offer to Philippe d'Orleans. I wanted something personal. Political enemy of the regent's as I am, I know that he is not considered a bad man. Men say that he is merciful, and that there have been no executions during his reign." "You forget Count Horn." "He was an assassin." "And what am I?" "There is this difference: Count Horn murdered in order to rob." "I neither can nor will ask anything of the regent," said Gaston. "Not you, personally, I know; but your friends. If they had a plausible pretense to offer, perhaps the prince himself might pardon you." "I have none, monseigneur." "It is impossible, monsieur--permit me to say so. A resolution such as you have taken must proceed from a sentiment of some kind--either of hatred or vengeance. And stay; I remember you told La Jonquiere, who repeated it to me, that there was a family feud: tell me the cause." "It is useless, monseigneur, to tire you with that; it would not interest you." "Never mind, tell it me." "Well, the regent killed my brother." "The regent killed your brother! how so? it is--impossible, Monsieur de Gaston," said the Duc d'Olivares. "Yes, killed; if from the effect we go to the cause." "Explain yourself; how could the regent do this?" "My brother, who, being fifteen years of age when my father died, three months before my birth, stood to me in the place of that father, and of mother, who died when I was still in the cradle--my brother loved a young girl who was brought up in a convent by the orders of the prince." "Do you know in what convent?" "No: I only know that it was at Paris." The duke murmured some words which Gaston could not hear.