Even for me the sun shines today and the flowers bloom with a fragrance they never breathed before—the red stains that clot the dust in the street are great crimson roses blossoming with a glory never before worn by flowers. “Pierre,” said Monsieur le Géneral, “you are not a traitor to France, are you?” “No, Monsieur,” I said sturdily, setting my teeth and giving him as steady a look as he was bending upon me. I told the truth. We who would free France from the rule of the aristocrats are not traitors. Rather are they traitors who would make of our nation a stagnant pool of slavery and corruption. Monsieur le Géneral looked at me again, keenly. “We may not agree upon definitions.” “My definitions are from the book of real life, Monsieur le Géneral. They are always in agreement with the truth. Monsieur knows, though, that he may trust me for himself, however my definitions may differ from his own. He has not forgotten that I saved his life once from an English sword. I know the memory is graven upon the mind of Monsieur le Géneral as deeply as the scar is cut in my arm.” “I think you love me, Pierre,” he replied. I laid my hand on my heart, bowing till my head almost touched one of the crimson roses in the velvet of Monsieur’s carpet. “More than my life, Monsieur.” What could I say fairer than that, for was not life the dearest thing to me then? So matters stood with my lord and me on that morning when he sent me with a missive to Mademoiselle Denise. To her or to another, what mattered it to me? They were all young demoiselles and, as such, of far less consequence than the silver mounting of my lord’s pistols or the flash of his gold-sheathed sword. As I crossed the courtyard a dark-eyed page, idling by the fountain that sparkled in the sun, was singing: “By the garden-wall the rose blooms red, And lifts to the sun its royal head; There’s never a flower of such sweet grace As the blossoming rose on my lady’s face— Rose-red, flower grace, Never a rose like my lady’s face.” With that refrain ringing in my ears, “Never a rose like my lady’s face,” I went from the shining flood of sunshine into a hall that seemed like dusky twilight after the outside brilliance. But in the centre was a space where the sunlight drifted down through an open window into a circle of radiance and in the middle of it stood Mademoiselle, a shining figure that dimmed all other light. She was clad in white and gold, and the long folds of her robe lay in shimmering snow along the marble floor. Her amber hair was like a river that the morning sun-rays cross. Her eyes shone like great sapphires set under long lashes of gold and arched over by golden brows. It was as if the light of a thousand suns had centered in one fair woman.