"I am capable of everything to the end of preventing an act reprobated by the General of my Order. The General of the Jesuits has spoken; all must obey him--even Kings, even the Pope. Silence and obedience are the words!" So saying, and profiting by the stupor into which his audacity and self-possession threw the other conspirators, the Jesuit left the room. "We are off, god-son," he said to little Rodin when he had descended to the second floor. "Come, my child; other cares call me elsewhere." "Me also," responded the boy, blessing himself and rising. "I am ready to follow you, good god-father. Command. To hear you is to obey." CHAPTER XV. THE KING ON TRIAL. As already recounted, John Lebrenn, in his capacity as municipal officer, was charged on the night of December 10, 1793, with the task of watching over Louis XVI, detained, with his family, at the Temple. Occupying a room before the chamber of the ex-King, Lebrenn felt for the prisoner a sort of compassion, as he reflected that this man, not without his good inclinations, and endowed with certain undeniable domestic virtues, had been pushed by his position as King to wrongful acts which were about to bring down a terrible punishment upon his head. Louis submitted to his confinement with mingled carelessness and resignation, rarely displaying either annoyance or anger at the rigorous surveillance of which he was the object; he hoped that the penalty pronounced against him by the Convention would not exceed imprisonment until after the peace, and then banishment. For his wife, his sister, and his son and daughter, he showed great solicitude; one proof of the inherent sin of royalty, which could transform a good husband, a good brother, and a good father--a man without malice in his private life--into an execrable tyrant, capable of every transgression.