"Does he, do all of his family, regret the Byzantine throne they once sat on? Do they who were once Kings, they who are akin to the throne of France, regret their present poverty and lowliness?" "They have never said so, sire, to my knowledge. They are content to be simple gentlemen. The men are plain soldiers, giving their swords to France, the women to rearing their children as children having the blood of De Courtenai in them. Sire, _bon sang ne peut mentir_." "They should be happy, very happy," Louis murmured. "The throne they lost could not outvie the gentle, simple life, nor the absence of trouble, care and heartache. De la Ruffardière, pray God that none whom you love may ever attain to a throne." CHAPTER XXVII It was, as the King had whispered to himself, De Beaurepaire's last night on earth, as it was also of those others. Of the woman he loved; of the vagabond who, bully though he might be, had been staunch and inflexible; of the old man who, the chief conspirator of all, was now to suffer the most ignominious of deaths. In the chamber in the Bastille allotted to De Beaurepaire the prisoner sat now before the fire musing on what all would say when they knew of his end; of what his friends who had loved him well would feel, and of how his enemies, of whom he had so many, would gloat over his downfall. Naturally he thought also of the women who had loved him once and the women who loved him now, in this his darkest hour. "The women who love me now!" he said to himself. "Who are they? Who? My mother and--and--Emérance. Emérance who is not fifty paces away from me, Emérance who dies by my side to-morrow, yet whom I may not see until, to-morrow, we stand on the same scaffold together. And then but for a moment ere the axe falls." "Whom I may not see until to-morrow," he repeated. "Not until to-morrow." And again he said to himself, "Not until to-morrow," while adding: "And there are so many long hours until three o'clock to-morrow!" As though to corroborate this thought there boomed out the tones of the prison clock striking midnight, the sound being followed an instant later by the deeper boom of the great bell of Notre Dame and then by that of the other clocks in the city. "Midnight," De Beaurepaire said. "Midnight. Fifteen hours yet of life, fifteen hours spent apart from her! And she here, close by. Ah! it is hard." He rose from the chair he sat in and went across to the other side of the great fireplace where, in another chair, was seated the Père Bourdaloue reading his breviary. Some time before this the priest had prayed with him and would do so again at intervals during the night, while later--before the end came to-morrow--he would confess and absolve the condemned man as his brother priest would confess and absolve the others, with the exception of Van den Enden, who was resolute not to see either priest or minister of any faith. Now, however, as has been said, the good man read his breviary.