"Oh, St. Quentin! on thee now hangs the destiny of France! St. Quentin, my noble city! If thou canst still resist but for one short week, Monsieur de Guise will have time to return, and the defence of thy faithful walls be organized anew! Whereas if they fall, the foe will march upon Paris, and all will be lost. St. Quentin, oh, I would give thee a new privilege for each hour of resistance, and a diamond for each of thy crumbling stones, if thou couldst hold out only one week more!" "Sire, it shall hold out, and more than a week!" said Gabriel, coming forward. He had made his resolution; and a sublime resolution it was! "Monsieur d'Exmès!" cried Henri and Diane, in the same breath,--the king in wonder, and Diane with contempt. "How did you come here, Monsieur?" asked the king, sternly. "Sire, I entered with his Eminence." "That's a different matter," said Henri; "but what were you saying, pray, Monsieur d'Exmès?--that St. Quentin might hold out, I think." "Yes, Sire; and you said, did you not, that if it did hold out, you would endow it with freedom and wealth?" "I say it again," said the king. "Very well, Sire; and would you refuse to the man who should make its holding out possible what you would accord to the town which held out? To the man whose energetic will should infect the whole city, and who would not surrender it until the last piece of the wall crumbles under the enemy's cannon? The favor which this man shall ask at your hands, this man who shall have given you this week's respite, and thus preserved your kingdom, shall he ask it in vain, Sire, and will you chaffer about an act of mercy with, him who has given you back an empire?" "No, by Heaven!" cried the king; "and whatever a king has to give that man shall have." "A bargain, Sire; for not only can a king give, but he can forgive as well. And it is a pardon, and not titles or gold which this man will ask at your hands." "But who is he? Where is this deliverer?" said the king. "He stands before you, Sire. It is I, the humble captain of your Guards, but who feel in my heart and my arm a superhuman strength, which shall help me to prove that I make no vain boast in undertaking to save at one and the same time my country and my father." "Your father, Monsieur d'Exmès!" said the astonished king. "I am not Monsieur d'Exmès," said Gabriel. "I am Gabriel de Montgommery, son of Comte Jacques de Montgommery, whom you ought to remember, Sire." "The son of the Comte de Montgommery!" cried the king, rising and turning pale. Madame Diane too fell back upon her couch with a gesture of terror. "Yes, Sire," replied Gabriel, calmly; "I am the Vicomte de Montgommery, who, in exchange for the service which he will render you by maintaining the defence of St. Quentin for a week, asks you for nothing but his father's liberty." "Your father, Monsieur!" said the king. "Your father is dead, has disappeared. What do I know about him? I don't know, I'm sure, where your father is."