"How indifferently he says it!" cried Nanon. "Do you know, wretch, what that man is to me?"
"I know that he is a man whom you prefer to your brother, since you would have saved him rather than me, and when you saw me you welcomed me with a curse."
Nanon made an impatient gesture.
"Pardieu! you are right," said Cauvignac; "I do not say that by way of reproach, but as a simple observation; for look you, with my hand upon my heart—I do not say upon my conscience, for fear I have none—I declare that if we were together once more in the cell in Château-Trompette, knowing what I know, I would say to Monsieur de Canolles, 'Monsieur, Nanon calls you her brother; it is you they seek, not I,'—and he would come to you in my place, and I would die in his."
"Then he is to die!" cried Nanon in a burst of grief, which proves that in the best organized minds death never presents itself as a certainty, but always as a fear simply; "then he is to die!"
"Sister," Cauvignac replied, "this is all that I can tell you, and upon it we must base all that we do. In the two hours since I left Bordeaux many things may have happened; but do not despair, for it is equally true that absolutely nothing at all may have happened. Here is an idea that has come into my head."
"Tell it me, quickly."
"I have a hundred men and my lieutenant within a league of Bordeaux."
"A sure man?"
"Ferguzon."