“All? No, that bailiff is a dangerous man, who would have killed my senator without taking your advice.”
“Ah, Sire,” she said, “if you had a friend devoted to you, would you abandon him? Would you not rather—”
“You are a woman,” he said, interrupting her in a faint tone of ridicule.
“And you, a man of iron!” she replied with a passionate sternness which pleased him.
“That man has been condemned to death by the laws of his country,” he continued.
“But he is innocent!”
“Child!” he said.
He took Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by the hand and led her from the hut to the plateau.
“See,” he continued, with that eloquence of his which changed even cowards to brave men, “see those three hundred thousand men—all innocent. And yet to-morrow thirty thousand of them will be lying dead, dead for their country! Among those Prussians there is, perhaps, some great mathematician, a man of genius, an idealist, who will be mown down. On our side we shall assuredly lose many a great man never known to fame. Perhaps even I shall see my best friend die. Shall I blame God? No. I shall bear it silently. Learn from this, mademoiselle, that a man must die for the laws of his country just as men die here for her glory.” So saying, he led her back into the hut. “Return to France,” he said, looking at the marquis; “my orders shall follow you.”
Laurence believed in a commutation of Michu’s punishment, and in her gratitude she knelt again before the Emperor and kissed his hand.