"But what is there new?" asked Gabriel. "I should imagine that the result so far has surpassed all your anticipations, has it not? In four days you have made yourself master of two of the outworks of Calais; besides, the defenders of the city itself and the Old Château cannot hold out more than forty-eight hours longer." "Very true," said the duke; "but they can hold out that length of time, and that will be quite long enough to foil all our plans, and save themselves." "Oh, Monseigneur must allow me to express my doubts of that," said Gabriel. "No, my friend, my long experience does not mislead me," rejoined the Duc de Guise; "except for some unexpected piece of good fortune, or some occurrence beyond human foresight, our undertaking has failed. Believe me when I say this." "But why?" asked Gabriel, with a smile, which contrasted strangely with the gloomy prognostications of the duke. "I will tell you in two words, upon the basis of your own plan. Listen carefully to what I say." "I am all attention," said Gabriel. "The extraordinarily hazardous experiment into which your youthful enthusiasm seduced my more cautious ambition," continued the duke, "had no possible chance of success except in the isolation and complete surprise of the English garrison. Calais was impregnable, we were agreed, but might be taken by surprise. We reasoned out our insane enterprise along that line, did we not?" "And up to the present moment," was Gabriel's reply, "the facts have borne us out in our reasoning." "They have indeed," said the duke; "and you have demonstrated, Gabriel, that your judgment of men is as keen and far-seeing as your perception of facts; and that you had studied the disposition and character of the governor of Calais as carefully as the interior plan of his seat of government. Lord Wentworth has not belied a single one of your conjectures. He believed that his nine hundred men and his formidable outposts would suffice to make us repent of our reckless freak. He despised us too much to be alarmed, and did not deign to call a single company to his assistance, either from any other part of the continent or from England." "I did indeed succeed in conjecturing how his arrogant pride would comport itself under such circumstances." "Thanks to his overweening self-conceit," resumed the Duc de Guise, "we carried Fort Ste. Agathe almost without striking a blow, and the Nieullay fort after three days of successful fighting." "So that at this moment," said Gabriel, cheerfully, "any bodies of English or Spaniards, coming by land to the rescue of their countrymen or their allies, will find the batteries of the Duc de Guise ready to exterminate them, instead of Lord Wentworth's cannon to second their assault." "They will be on their guard, and will not approach very near," said the duke, smiling; for the young man's buoyant hopefulness was beginning to infect him. "Well, then, have we not gained an important point?" said Gabriel.