"It may be so. Ah! well. My sword! My sword! You would have that?" "I must," De Brissac said, not without a tremor in his voice. For he remembered De Beaurepaire (then a young man of twenty and the handsomest of all the flower of the _haute noblesse_) at Arras and the Siege of Laudrécies, and recalled his bravery and reckless daring. And now it had come to this! "Take it," his prisoner said, drawing the blade from its sheath, kissing it, and then handing it to him, "take it. I pray God that ere long I may receive it back again." "Amen," De Brissac said solemnly. "Now, what next?" De Beaurepaire asked. "The next is--the Bastille." "And after?" "I know not." "Ere I set out, tell me one thing. And before you answer listen, De Brissac; listen as a soldier to a soldier, a friend to a friend. There is a woman whom I have learnt to love----" "Ah!" exclaimed the other, recalling how often this handsome patrician's name had been mixed up with the names of women and knowing, as all in Paris knew, how the hearts of those women had gone out to him. "A woman whom I love," De Beaurepaire went on, his voice sounding broken to the other's ear. "A woman who loves me and has long loved me fondly, tenderly, as I now love her. Not a woman who is one of those giddy, heartless butterflies who circle round Louis' Court, who change their lovers as they change their robes; who love one man to-day and another to-morrow; no! not one of these. But, instead, one who is poor, unknown to our world, and of, I think, for in truth I do not know, humble origin--yet whose love and devotion pass aught I have ever met. One who would rather die with me, for me, than live with others." "_Die!_" De Brissac said, turning away his head as he spoke, since, rude soldier as he might be, and acquainted only with camps and battlefields and sieges, there was a heart in his bosom. "Nay, surely there is no thought of dying for you or--for--her!" "Alas! if, as I suspect, this sudden resolve of the King to dismiss me, to arrest me, points to one thing, the end will not be far remote from death. For myself I care not, but--ah! not death for her!" he cried. "She is, as I have said, nought in the world's eyes--nought--nought! but she is a tender, loving woman, too good to be hacked to death or mangled on the wheel." "What would you have me do?" "Cause a letter, permit a letter, to be conveyed to her. Either where I left her this morning in my Lodge in the Bois de Vincennes, at Saint Mandé, or where'er she may be in Paris." "It is impossible. Not even if your letter was untied, unsealed, so that all the world might read, could that be done. D'Hautefeuille is in supreme command at Versailles now; it would have to pass through his hands but it would pass no farther. It is impossible." "Impossible," De Beaurepaire muttered. "Oh! Emérance! Emérance!"