“So could the porter at your gates, but he loves France almost as well as does the Duc de Bercy.”
“You take refuge in the fact that you are my kinsman,” returned the Duke acidly.
“The honour is stimulating, but I should not seek salvation by it. I have the greater safety of being your guest,” answered Detricand with dignity.
“Too premature a sanctuary for a Vaufontaine!” retorted the Duke, fighting down growing admiration for a kinsman whose family he would gladly root out, if it lay in his power.
Detricand made a gesture of impatience, for he felt that his appeal had availed nothing, and he had no heart for a battle of words. His wit had been tempered in many fires, his nature was non-incandescent to praise or gibe. He had had his share of pastime; now had come his share of toil, and the mood for give and take of words was not on him.
He went straight to the point now. Hopelessly he spoke the plain truth.
“I want nothing of the Prince d’Avranche but his weight and power in a cause for which the best gentlemen of France are giving their lives. I fasten my eyes on France alone: I fight for the throne of Louis, not for the duchy of Bercy. The duchy of Bercy may sink or swim for all of me, if so be it does not stand with us in our holy war.”
The Duke interjected a disdainful laugh. Suddenly there shot into Detricand’s mind a suggestion, which, wild as it was, might after all belong to the grotesque realities of life. So he added with deliberation:
“If alliance must still be kept with this evil government of France, then be sure there is no Vaufontaine who would care to inherit a duchy so discredited. To meet that peril the Duc de Bercy will do well to consult his new kinsman—Philip d’Avranche.”
For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. The old nobleman’s look was like a flash of flame in a mask of dead flesh. The short upper lip was arrested in a sort of snarl, the fingers, half-closed, were hooked like talons, and the whole man was a picture of surprise, fury, and injured pride. The Duc de Bercy to be harangued to his duty, scathed, measured, disapproved, and counselled, by a stripling Vaufontaine—it was monstrous.