A light broke at once upon the mind of the young citizen. "Good God!" he cried, "he is not dead. He lives, my lord, he lives! He escaped, found refuge with his own father; ay, and was instrumental in procuring your liberation from prison. He lives--indeed, he lives!"
The eyes of the Duke of Gueldres fixed upon him as he spoke, with an intense and half-doubting gaze. But as the young burgher repeated earnestly, "He lives!" the dying man, by a great effort, half raised himself from the ground, clasped his hands together, and exclaimed, "Thank God!" They were the last words he ever spoke; for almost as he uttered them, he closed his eyes, as if a faint sickness had come over him, fell back upon the turf with a convulsive shudder; and in a few moments Adolphus of Gueldres was no more.
Albert Maurice gazed upon him with a feeling of painful interest. He had slain him, it is true, under circumstances which he believed to justify the deed. But no one, that is not in heart a butcher, can, under any circumstances, take life hand to hand, without feeling that a shadow has settled over existence. There is always something to be remembered, always something that can never be forgotten. In the case of the young citizen, too, the cloud was of a deeper shade; for he felt that in the death of the Duke of Gueldres, however justified by the immediate provocation, he had taken another life in that course of ambition, in which he foresaw that many more must fall.
Thus in gloomy bitterness, he took his way back to the village, and, without any explanation, gave orders that the dead body should be brought in with honour. The soldiers concluded that both horse and man had died by the hands of the enemy; and Albert Maurice, in quitting his quarters the next morning, gave strict directions that the remains of the deceased prince should be immediately sent after him to Ghent.
After his departure, however, before a bier could be got ready, and all the necessary preparations entered into, a party from the town of Tournay swept the little village of Frasne; and the body of the Duke, being found there, was carried away by the French. Due honours were shown to the corpse by the people of Tournay; and many writers of that age attribute the death of Adolphus, the bad Duke of Gueldres, to the successful sortie of the garrison of that city.
CHAPTER XXXV.
It was barely dawn when Albert Maurice began his last day's march towards Ghent; and though the distance was considerable, at the hour of three in the afternoon, he was within a league of the city. The number of armed men that he now overtook, both single individuals and small bands, showed him that the force which had retreated from before Tournay must have lately passed. And with a sort of anxious apprehension in regard to the machinations which might have taken place in Ghent during his absence, he spoke personally with almost all the stragglers he saw; and, by a few kind words, easily induced a number of the half-disciplined burghers and peasantry to join the small force he was leading into Ghent; most of them being very willing to pass for part of a conquering rather than part of a conquered army.
At the distance of about two miles from the city, at a point where the town itself was hidden by a detached wood, Albert Maurice perceived a small body of horsemen coming towards him; but as such a sight had nothing extraordinary in it, he took but little heed of the party till it was within a hundred yards, when, to his unutterable surprise, he beheld the portly figure of worthy Martin Fruse leading the van on horseback, a situation which the good burgher, as may be well remembered, had never coveted in his most agile and enterprising age, and which had become quite abhorrent to his feelings now that years and bulk had weighed down all activity.
"Halt your troops! halt your troops, my dear boy!" cried the worthy merchant, in some trepidation. "Halt your troops, and listen to me while I tell you----"
"Had you not better speak with the honourable President apart?" said one of the party, in whom Albert Maurice instantly recognised Maitre Pierre, the eschevin who had been called to examine the dwelling of the old Lord of Neufchatel; although, on glancing his eye over the rest, he could recall the face of none other amongst the stout men-at-arms, of which the chief part of the band was composed.