All at once he made a polite gesture towards the Duke, and, facing the Minister, said in a cavalier-like tone, and with a touch of patronage: “Yes, yes, Dalbarade; it is of no consequence, and I myself will be surety for both.” Then turning to the nobleman, he added: “We are beginning to square accounts, Duke. Last time we met I had a large favour of you, and to-day you have a small favour of me. Pray introduce your kinsman here, before you take him with you,” and he turned squarely towards Philip.
Philip could scarcely believe his ears. The Duke’s kinsman! Had the Duke then got his release on the ground that they were of kin—a kinship which, even to be authentic, must go back seven centuries for proof?
Yet here he was being introduced to the revolutionary general as “my kinsman of the isles of Normandy.” Here, too, was the same General Grandjon-Larisse applauding him on his rare fortune to be thus released on parole through the Duc de Bercy, and quoting with a laugh, half sneer and half raillery, the old Norman proverb: “A Norman dead a thousand years cries Haro! Haro! if you tread on his grave.”
So saying, he saluted the Duke with a liberal flourish of the hand and a friendly bow, and turned away to Dalbarade.
A half-hour later Philip was outside with the Duke, walking slowly through the court-yard to an open gateway, where waited a carriage with unliveried coachman and outriders. No word was spoken till they entered the carriage and were driven swiftly away.
“Whither now, your Highness?” asked Philip.
“To the duchy,” answered the other shortly, and relapsed into sombre meditation.
CHAPTER XX
The castle of the Prince d’Avranche, Duc de Bercy, was set upon a vast rock, and the town of Bercy huddled round the foot of it and on great granite ledges some distance up. With fifty defenders the castle, on its lofty pedestal, might have resisted as many thousands; and, indeed, it had done so more times than there were rubies in the rings of the present Duke, who had rescued Captain Philip d’Avranche from the clutches of the Red Government.