"But I must have them."
"And I tell you as firmly, you can not."
"Listen, Captain," he begged in altered tones, "those dispatches may compromise Celeste. Let us take from them anything which implicates her in this miserable intrigue, and deliver the rest. That is easy. I can open and close them again so it can not be told."
"My orders are not to open them."
"By God, you will!" he burst out with volcanic fury, "no, no; I am too hot. We can lose them; tell Serigny they were never found; tell him Yvard carried them off; tell him he never had them. We can fix a tale."
"It would be a long story, and a liar must needs have a good memory."
I was playing for time, time to think, time to get away.
"But I will go with you to Serigny," he insisted, "tell the lie and make him to believe. 'Pshaw, man, you know not the ways of the world, at least not at the Court of France."
"Think, Jerome, of the war, of our people in the colonies, of our honor?"
"I care not for it all," the wild passion in his voice made me almost fear him. "All that is as nothing to me where Celeste is concerned. Oh, Placide, think of it! I love her, love her, love her—do you comprehend what that means to such a man as I? I, who have loved her almost from her birth, have seen her taken from me and sold—yes, sold by her money-loving father, sold, sold! I, who have borne all her husband's leers when, flushed with the insolence of rank and wine, this shriveled bridegroom bore her as a piece of ornament to his house in Paris. Can I bear to lose her now?