The King smiled, and turned his eyes upon the papers; and when he had read them nearly through, he smiled again, even more gaily than before.
"It turns out, gentlemen," he said, "that an affair has happened to me which I fancy happens to us all more than once in our lives. I have been completely cheated by a valet. I remember giving the villain the paper well, out of which it seems he manufactured a free pardon for his master. At all events, this frees the Count from the charge of base ingratitude which has been heavily urged against him. Your statement of his willing surrender, Montausier, greatly diminishes his actual and undoubted crime; and as I have complied with the request of the Prince de Marsillac, and looked at the papers, I must not refuse you yours. Either to-day, if the Count have arrived, or to-morrow, I will hear his story from his own lips."
"Sire," replied the Duke of Montausier, "I have been daring enough to receive him in my apartments."
The cloud came slightly again over Louis's countenance; but though he replied with dignified gravity, yet it was not with anger. "You have done wrong," he said; "but since it is so, call him to my presence. All you ladies and gentlemen around shall judge if I deal harshly with him."
There was a pretty girl standing not far from the King, and close between her own mother and the interpreter of the ambassadors from Siam. We have spoken of her before, under the name of Annette de Marville; and while she had remained in that spot, her eyes had more than once involuntarily filled with tears. She was timid and retiring in her nature; and as the Duke of Montausier turned away to obey the King, every one was surprised to hear her voice raised sufficiently loud to reach even the ear of Louis himself, saying to the interpreter, "Tell them that they are now going to see how magnanimously the King will pardon one who has offended him."
The King looked another way; but it was evident to those who were accustomed to watch his countenance, that he connected the words he had just heard with the humiliation he had inflicted on the Doge of Genoa, and that the contrast struck and pleased him not a little.
In a very short time, before this impression had at all faded away, the door again opened, and the Duke of Montausier re-entered with the Count of Morseiul. The latter was pale, but perfectly firm and composed. He did not wear his sword, but he carried it sheathed in his hand, and advancing directly towards Louis, he bent one knee before the King, at the same time laying down the weapon at the monarch's feet.
"Sire," he said, without rising, "I have brought you a sword, which for more than ten years was drawn in every campaign in your Majesty's service. It has, unfortunately, been drawn against you; and that it has been so, and at the very moment when your Majesty had a right to expect gratitude at my hands, is the bitterest recollection of my life; so bitter indeed, so horrible, so painful, that the moment I discovered the terrible error into which I had been hurried, the moment that I discovered that I owed my liberation to your Majesty, I instantly determined, whatever might be the result of the events that were then taking place, to surrender myself, unconditionally, to your Majesty's pleasure, to embrace no means of escape, to reject every opportunity of flight; and if your indignation so far overcame your mercy as to doom me to death, to submit to it, not alone with courage, which every man in your Majesty's service possesses, but with perfect resignation to your royal will."
The words, the manner, the action, all pleased the King, and the countenance with which he looked upon the young nobleman was by no means severe.
"You have, I fear, greatly erred, Monsieur de Morseiul," he replied. "But still I believe you have been much misled. Is there any favour that you have to ask me?"