"Marquis, where is the Duke, your father?"
"That is my demand of you," replied Louis, pointing to the order; "the Count Grimaldo expected I should find him here. Here he is not. And you are answerable for his safety, and his appearance."
In glancing round the dungeon, from the floor to the cieling, the warden's eye was quicker than the deputy's; and without attending to the reply of Louis, he exclaimed, "He has escaped through the window!"
"Impossible!" cried the deputy, "he could not reach it."
"Who reached it to take out the bars?" returned his superior, "he is gone, and by that way. Round, soldiers, to the ditch!"
Louis stood in wordless astonishment at this confirmation of what he too had thought impossible, though the impossibility to him had rested on the mind of the Duke, not on the means of escape: but when he saw the men withdraw with fixed bayonets, to hunt his father's life, (for he knew his resolution too well to believe, that after having once chosen the alternative of flight, he would submit to be re-taken;) all his father's danger rushed upon him; and conscious to no other impulse than that of defending him, he turned impetuously to throw himself before the soldiers.
The warden saw the movement, and guessed the intention. He was a man of gigantic muscle, and seizing the arm of Louis, called aloud to bar the egress.
"What violence is this?" demanded Louis, forcibly extricating himself and rushing towards the door. But the sentinel without had thrust the bolt into its guard.
"You must be my prisoner, Marquis," returned the warden, "until those men have searched the neighbourhood.
"On your peril!" exclaimed Louis; "I demand to be released!—In the name of your sovereign, and of your laws, I demand it!—You have no right to imprison an unoffending man, who came hither under the safe conduct of your minister's signet."