The duke maintained his impassive demeanor.
Canolles looked about him.
"Has the time arrived?" he asked.
"Yes, monsieur."
"I thought that you would await the return of Madame la Vicomtesse de Cambes; you promised her that nothing should be done in her absence. It seems that nobody has any regard for his word to-day."
And the prisoner gazed reproachfully, not at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, but at Lenet.
"Alas! monsieur," cried the latter, with tears in his eyes, "forgive us. Madame la Princesse positively refused to show mercy to you. I begged very earnestly none the less; Monsieur le Duc will bear witness to that, and God as well. But she deems it imperative that Richon's death should be paid for in kind, and she was as immovable as stone. Now do you yourself pass judgment on my conduct, Monsieur le Baron; instead of allowing the burden of your horrible situation to fall partly upon the viscountess, I ventured,—pray forgive me, for I feel that I stand in great need of your forgiveness,—I ventured to cause it to fall upon you alone, for you are a soldier and of gentle birth."
"In that case," faltered Canolles, whose voice was choked with emotion, "in that case I shall not see her again! When you bade me embrace her, it was for the last time!"
A sob stronger than stoicism or pride shook Lenet's frame. He stepped back and wept bitterly. Canolles thereupon fixed his piercing gaze upon the men who stood about him, but could see on every side none but faces rendered stern and pitiless by Richon's cruel death, and among them a very few timid creatures, who were stiffening their muscles to conceal their emotion and help them to swallow their tears and sighs.
"Oh! it is terrible to think upon," murmured the youth, in a moment of superhuman clearness of vision which opens before the soul a boundless field of view over what men call life,—that is to say, a few brief instants of happiness scattered here and there like islands in the midst of an ocean of tears and suffering,—"terrible to think upon! I had in my arms the woman I adore, who had just told me for the first time that she loved me; I had before me a long and blissful life, the realization of my fondest dream; and lo! in a moment, in a second, death takes the place of it all!"