"It is easy for you, sitting there, to say so," and pausing in my walk, I stood over him; "but the arm of that cunning devil in Plessis can reach, as he told me, from Arragon to England, and from the verge of the Empire to the sea in the west. Gleam? There is no gleam."
"There is your oath, my son."
"My oath? An oath taken in blindness is no oath."
But Brother Paul shook his head.
"A Christian man's oath is the honour of his soul. When you swore your oath at Plessis there was always an alternative you could follow."
"To return?"
"To return," he repeated.
"But—that is death?"
"I said it was the honour of the soul. The ancient tongue has a motto, Prius mori quam fidem fallere. Sooner die than break faith—faith with God and all that is best in ourselves, faith with that unhappy woman who for no fault of hers, for no cause but that she loved you, stands to-day in your place. Were you Paulus and I Son Gaspard, I would go back to Plessis—and die. Not that I dare to judge for you."
"I cannot see it," I cried, the love of life and the love of Suzanne both strong within me. Was her rose not buckled to my bonnet? "Father! Father! Is there a God at all that we men are put to such straits?"