"Go and fetch him, then; I do not prevent you."
"And did you know this secret?"
"Which?"
"That M. de Livry and the chevalier were the same?"
"Yes, I knew it. What, then?"
"You wished to deceive me."
"I wished to save you from the sentimentality in which you are lost at this moment. The regent of France—already too much occupied by whims and pleasures—must make things worse by adding passion to the list. And what a passion! Paternal love, dangerous love—an ordinary love may be satisfied, and then dies away—but a father's tenderness is insatiable, and above all, intolerable. It will cause your highness to commit faults which I shall prevent, for the simple reason that I am happy enough not to be a father; a thing on which I congratulate myself daily, when I see the misfortunes and stupidity of those who are."
"And what matters a head more or less?" cried the regent. "This De Chanlay will not kill me, when he knows it was I who liberated him."
"No; neither will he die from a few days in the Bastille; and there he must stay."
"And I tell you he shall leave it to-day."