"The tyrant who murders innocent men, women and children," she said, "can have his answer now. I choose death which is inevitable in preference to a life of shame."
"You seem," he retorted, "to have lost sight of the fact that the law gives me the right to take by force that which you so obstinately refuse."
"Have I not said," she replied, "that death is my choice? Life with you would be a life of shame."
"I can get a priest to marry us without your consent: and your religion forbids you to take your own life," he said with a sneer.
To this she made no reply, but he knew that he had his answer. Smothering a curse, he resumed after a while:
"So you prefer to drag your father to death with you? Yet he has begged you to consider your decision and to listen to reason. He has given his consent to our marriage."
"Let me see my father," she retorted firmly, "and hear him say that with his own lips.
"Ah!" she added quickly, for at her words Martin-Roget had turned his head away and shrugged his shoulders with well-assumed indifference, "you cannot and dare not let me see him. For three days now you have kept us apart and no doubt fed us both up with your lies. My father is duc de Kernogan, Marquis de Trentemoult," she added proudly, "he would far rather die side by side with his daughter than see her wedded to a criminal."
"And you, my girl," rejoined Martin-Roget coldly, "would you see your father branded as a malefactor, linked to a thief and sent to perish in the Loire?"
"My father," she retorted, "will die as he has lived, a brave and honourable gentleman. The brand of a malefactor cannot cling to his name. Sorrow we are ready to endure—death is less than nothing to us—we will but follow in the footsteps of our King and of our Queen and of many whom we care for and whom you and your proconsul and your colleagues have brutally murdered. Shame cannot touch us, and our honour and our pride are so far beyond your reach that your impious and blood-stained hands can never sully them."