"Abbé de Boisguerin," he said, "talk not to me of consolation and of comfort. Is not my brother dead? Is not my brother dead, killed by my own hand? Can you tear that from the book of fate? Can you blot it out from memory? Can you rase it for ever from the records of crimes done? Can you find me a pillow on all the earth, where I can lay my head in peace?"
"Your brother, indeed, is dead," said the Abbé de Boisguerin, without in the least degree trying to relieve the mind of his young companion from the crime with which conscience charged him. "Your brother, indeed, is dead; and it is not to be denied that your hand, my dear Gaspar, took his life; but yet you were in a city where war was actually going on between two parties, one of which you served, and the other your brother. These things have happened every day in civil wars, and always will happen. They are to be grieved at, but who can help them?"
"But I was engaged in no civil wars," exclaimed the young Marquis. "My men were at the Louvre. I was not fighting on the part of the King: I was not engaged in trampling down the people. But what was I busied with, Abbé de Boisguerin? I was engaged in a scheme for carrying off--from him she loved, and from those who had a right to protect her--one whom I had no title to control, whom I was bound by honour to guard and to defend. I was injuring her; I was preparing to injure her. If I had not lied to her myself, I had caused her to be deceived and lied to; and all that I had previously done made the act itself which I had committed, but the more hateful. Speak not to me of consolation, Abbé; speak not to me of hope or comfort. You of all men, do not venture to mention to me a word like happiness or confidence."
"And why not, my Lord?" demanded the Abbé somewhat sternly. "What have I done to merit reproach in the matter?"
"Has it not been you that have prompted me throughout?" demanded the Marquis. "Was it not you who devised the scheme, prepared the means, got possession of the Queen's letter by corrupting her servants. Was it not your tool, that, upon pretence of assisting her to the other gates of the hotel, got her into our power; and was it not you, when her prayers and entreaties and agitation would have made me yield--was it not you that resisted, and remorselessly bade the men carry her on? Did you not yourself stand by me when the shot was fired; and was it not your warning, that disgrace and death must follow hesitation, which winged the ball that took my brother's life?"
"It is all true, Gaspar," replied the Abbé de Boisguerin in a sad but no longer a harsh tone. "It is all true; and from you I meet the reward, which all men will meet and well deserve who love others better than themselves, and who do for them things that they would not do for themselves. Nevertheless, I still think that there was not that evil on our side with which you seem to reproach yourself. Shocked and mourning for your brother's death, you see all things in dark and gloomy colours. Those things which you regarded before as light, have now become to you heavy and sombre as night. But all this is but mood, and let me call to your remembrance what sense and reason say. You and your brother loved the same person,--you vehemently, warmly, devotedly; he coldly, and by halves. You, as the elder brother and as lord of the dwelling in which she was received, had, if any thing, the first claim upon her; and he himself rendered that claim still greater by leaving her entirely to you, and absenting himself from her. You had every right, therefore, to seek her hand by all means; and when you found that, though he affected generous forbearance, he had gone covertly to forestall your demand, and gain the promise of her hand from her guardian, surely you were bound to keep no measures with him. All I did subsequently was to serve you in a cause that I thought was right, and it is but a few days ago that you were grateful to me for so doing. I said at the time, and I say again, that if at the moment when your brother commenced his attack upon the house in the Rue de la Ferronière, either you or I had been taken, death and eternal disgrace would have been the consequence. We acted but in our own defence, and those who assailed us cannot accuse us for so acting."
Gaspar de Montsoreau heard him in sullen silence, his dark eyes rolling from side to side beneath his heavy eyebrows. In his dealings with the Abbé de Boisguerin he had by this time learned fully how artful and politic was the man who led him. He saw it, and he could not doubt it, even while he shared in the things at which his better spirit revolted. But that very knowledge taught him to doubt, whether the art and the policy were used for his service, and out of affection to him, or whether they were all directed in some secret way to the benefit of him who wielded them so dexterously. The suspicions which Villequier had instilled rose fresh in his mind at this very time; and as his only answer to the Abbé's reasonings, he demanded with a keen glance and a sharp tone, "Tell me. Abbé, was it, or was it not, you who brought the reiters upon us, and who gave the King's forces notice of our passage?"
"I did the one, but not the other," replied the Abbé calmly. "I dealt not with the reiters, Gaspar de Montsoreau, for that would have been dangerous to me, to her, and to you. But I did inform the troops of the King, because I already had learned how deeply the Duke of Guise was pledged to your brother; because I knew that no reasoning would prevent either you or this fair girl from going on to Soissons; and because I saw that there was no earthly chance of your obtaining her hand, but by placing her under the charge of her father's nearest male relation, from whom the Duke of Guise unjustly withholds the guardianship. I own it, I acknowledge it, I am proud of it."
The way in which the Abbé replied was not such as Gaspar de Montsoreau had expected; but dissatisfied with himself, and of course with every thing else, Gaspar de Montsoreau still gazed sullenly on the floor, and then raised his eyes to the open window of the pavilion, where the warm sun was seen streaming through the green vines, with the birds still singing sweetly in the woods without. But it was all to him as the face of Eden to our first parents after the fall; a shade seemed to come over his eyes when he looked upon the loveliness of nature; the very sunshine seemed to him darkness; and the fair world a desert.
"Can you give me back my delight in that sunshine?" he said, after a pause. "Can you make the notes of those birds again sound sweet to my ear? Can you remove the heavy, heavy burden of remorse from this heart? Can you ever, ever prove to me, that for this unrequited love I have not made myself a guilty wretch, bearing the sign of Cain upon his brow, the curse of Cain within his bosom?"