“I sometimes think,” replied M. des Graves, “that in permitting him—I had almost said in forcing him—to cross the Loire again in the way you have described, Heaven had some great design for him, and that we shall hear of him again.”
But La Rochejaquelein had been lying these two months under a hedge with a bullet in his brain.
“Then there is Marigny,” went on Louis. “I would give a great deal for news. I wonder, for instance, if the Princess Elisabeth is still alive. Since she was not murdered with the Queen last October, perhaps they meant to spare her.”
“Whenever she enters Paradise, there will be one saint there the more,” remarked the priest.
“That,” said Louis, “is almost exactly what I overheard M. de Lescure saying to Gilbert just before Luçon, when that false report of the Queen’s death was circulated. I remember that I was struck at the time with Gilbert’s lack of enthusiasm on the point. He flushed, looked down, and said nothing, and seeing that he knew the Princess personally, I wondered why he was so unresponsive.”
“He had strong likes and dislikes, as you know,” returned M. des Graves, who knew to what very human resentment must be assigned this coldness of which he now heard for the first time. But there was no need that Louis should know it.
“Accursed window!” exclaimed the young man, coming suddenly out of the brief reverie into which he had fallen. “It was through the window from which he pulled me back that the bullet came, was it not?”
The priest nodded.
“All my life I shall regret that I was not there!”
“Why?” asked M. des Graves gently. “You have nothing, my son, with which to reproach yourself; you were doing your duty elsewhere. Humanly speaking, you yourself were running a much greater risk than Gilbert.”