"I am answering it in my own way, and, I repeat, there are prisons."
"And would there not be conspiracies? Would France not be torn asunder in civil war? Would the blood of France not flow like water? Be sensible, Stephen: am I not right?"
"I will never be the King's arm in Amboise, never, never. I would sooner ride back to Valmy and face the justice of the King. The justice of the King!" scoffed La Mothe, to ease his troubled soul. "And in any case I shall return to Valmy; my word is passed."
Again Commines let the sarcasm levelled at the King's justice pass unchallenged: it is never wise to block a safety-valve when a high pressure, whether of steam or of passion, is blowing itself off.
"These things being granted," he went on, "what course is the King to follow? Is he to pardon the crime against the nation? for that is what it is; is he to pass it over in silence and leave the criminal free to weave a second and perhaps successful conspiracy? The King dare not: for the nation's sake he dare not. What then? Is he to arrest and try the prince by solemn course of law? I doubt if the Dauphin of France is not above the common law of France, but apart from that again the King dare not. France would be rent from end to end, and her enemies, England, Spain, Burgundy, would swoop upon her and lay her waste, as in the days before the coming of The Maid. I say again, the King dare not. What course is left? Nothing but the arm of justice, that justice which is Almighty God's, striking in secret, and so France is saved."
He ended, but La Mothe returned no answer. Not that he was convinced, no, not by a hairbreadth. But the sophism, and he knew it to be a sophism, was too subtle for him, and his safest refuge was silence. And yet his inability to tear the sophism to tatters was not the sole cause of the silence. Commines' last question, What is left? though a mere flourish of rhetoric, had stirred another possible reply. Reconcilement was left, the union of father and son in love was left. Inexorable logic as voiced by Commines, if it was logic at all and not a sophism, might coerce the King to a terrible justice, but would the father's love not welcome the reconcilement of a son's penitence as a way of escape from the ultimate horror of the logic? And surely that love must be a very tender, very yearning, very forgiving love when even in the midst of just anger it could bend to such gentle thoughts as lay hidden in those gifts through the hand of a stranger. Surely, surely, surely. And so La Mothe kept silence.
"There may be no plot: there is no plot," he said at last, though in the face of Commines' assertion he had little hope he was right; then he added, "and what of Mademoiselle de Vesc?"
"The greater includes the less," replied Commines shortly.
"What do you mean by that?"
"If the King may not spare his son can he spare the girl?"