Denis raised his hand again with an angry gesture, and Henry continued more loudly:
“I repeat it, sir,” he cried; “a common cutpurse; and please understand that you are quite at my mercy. No one can save you but I. Now listen. Men call me merciless and tyrannical. Let them. I am also just, and can be merciful when I please. Are you ready to accept my mercy?”
Denis raised his hand again quickly.
“Hah! Good! Then it is in your power to act in a way that will command this mercy, possibly my forgiveness, and the continuance of the feeling of friendship that you, so brilliant and talented a man, have won.”
Denis raised his hand again, as if in deprecation, feeling in spite of his perilous position something like amusement at the success attending the playing of his rôle.
“Oh yes,” continued the King; “you have proved yourself a man brilliant, courtly, and in every way fitted for the high position you held before you stooped to the wretched chicanery and folly which brought you to this pass. Now, sir, I tell you I am ready to be merciful and spare your life, but upon conditions; and these stipulations which I shall make, I tell you, you as my prisoner are bound to accept. You came here under false pretences to steal a jewel that was England’s by the right of conquest, making to yourself the excuse that originally it belonged to France. Is not this so?”
Denis raised his hand again.
“You do not speak,” said the King. “Well, knowing as I do that you were badly wounded by my faithful guards, and are now suffering severely for your crime, I am willing to accept a motion of your hand, a gesture, as your acceptation, as a reply. You see, sir, that all through this mad escapade Providence was working a means of compassing its righteous ends. You have fallen completely into my power, and either you submit to my terms or die.”
Denis raised his hand quickly.
“You mean an appeal for mercy,” cried the King. “Wait till you have heard my terms. They are these. I have here,” he continued, unfolding a paper, “a complete renunciation on the part of France of the city of Bordeaux with the towns and territories embraced by Guienne, lands that were won by the good sword of my predecessors, to have and hold for three hundred years, but which you now occupy on sufferance and by the magnanimity of the English throne, which has mercifully withheld itself from seizing them by an act of war.”