"Their nature? Why, their nature will be of the same sort as those already offered to your Emperor."
"Yes?"
"The position of leader in the movement for world-wide disarmament," said Crochard, and smiled as Pachmann's lips whitened. "Ah, my dear Admiral, your Emperor is too selfish, too ambitious—he has, as an English poet puts it, that ambition which overleaps itself. He should have accepted the arrangement which M. Vard proposed. That would have been glory enough. But no; he must dream of being a greater than Napoleon, of world-empire; and in consequence he will lose that which he already has. But I foresaw it; I foresaw it from the moment M. Vard stipulated that Alsace-Lorraine must be returned to France. I knew that your Emperor was not great enough—that he has too small a soul—to consent to that restitution!"
Pachmann raised his head slowly.
"So it was you who listened at the door, that night?" he said.
"Yes, it was I. And it was I who discovered that you and a companion whom I will not name waited for sunrise, one Monday morning, on the quay at Toulon. For that, France must have revenge."
Crochard's eyes were gleaming now, and there was no smile upon his lips. Instead there was in his face a deadly earnestness, a fierce hatred, before which Pachmann shrank a little.
"She shall have it!" cried a voice from the bed, where Vard had been bending forward, drinking in every word. "She shall have it!"
"You hear?" said Crochard, and then he smiled again. "Ah, my dear Admiral, it was a mistake to insist upon that test! It could have been made, just as well, upon some old hulk of your own—and then France would have had nothing for which to exact vengeance! I pity you; for it is you and you alone, who have brought this retribution to your country. From first to last, you have behaved like a fool in this affair. It was you who betrayed her!"
"I?" stammered Pachmann. "I? In what way? By what means?"