"Resign your command, and we will work upon your successor more effectively than upon you. In a year, in two years, you can take service under Monsieur le Prince with the rank of brigadier."
Canolles sadly shook his head.
"Alas! madame," said he, "why do you ask nothing of me but impossibilities?"
"Do you make that answer to me?" said Claire. "Upon my soul, monsieur, I do not understand you. Weren't you on the point of signing your resignation once? Did you not say to her who was beside you at that time, listening to you with such delight, that you did it freely and from the bottom of your heart? Why, I pray to know, will you not do here, when I ask you, when I beg you to do it, the very thing that you proposed to do at Jaulnay?"
Every word entered poor Nanon's heart like a dagger-thrust, and Canolles seemed to share her agony.
"That which at that time was an act of trifling importance would to-day be treachery, infamous treachery!" said Canolles, gloomily. "I will never surrender Île Saint-Georges, I will never resign my post!"
"Stay, stay," said Claire in her sweetest voice, but looking about uneasily all the while; for Canolles' resistance, and, above all, the constraint under which he was evidently laboring seemed very strange to her. "Listen now to my last proposition, with which I would have liked to begin, for I knew, and I said beforehand, that you would refuse the first two. Material advantages, and I am very happy to have divined it, are not the things which tempt a heart like yours. You must needs have other hopes than those of ambition and of fortune; noble instincts require noble rewards. Listen—"
"In Heaven's name, madame," Canolles broke in, "have pity on me!"
And he made as if he would withdraw.
Claire thought that his resolution was shaken, and, confident that what she was about to say would complete her victory, she detained him, and continued:—