"It is not the graciousness I lack," replied the officer, "it is the power. For, Monsieur Elphinston, you must surely know we are vowed to silence and secrecy within these walls. It is more than our posts, nay, our heads, are worth to answer questions or divulge secrets."
"If I could know," said Bertie, "when I shall be interrogated it would be much."
"No mortal man in the Bastille can tell you that," the King's Lieutenant interrupted, "not even De Launey himself. The examiner, or judge, comes at fitful times and without warning. He came a week ago; he may come again next week; he may not come again for a year, or for two years."
"Is it because he did not concern himself with my case a week ago that I am now moved?" Bertie asked wistfully; "is it because I am passed over and may have to wait a long time now that this change takes place?"
The officer shrugged his shoulders and turned his face away. He was a soldier and had a heart within him, in spite of being the Lieutenant of the Bastille, and he could not reply that Bertie had guessed accurately, that it was because he had been passed over, and might, in consequence, be passed over for years, that he was now removed from the chapel.
"I see. I understand," Bertie said. "I understand very well. I may linger on here till I am old; I may become, if I live long enough, the oldest prisoner!" Then, once more addressing the Lieutenant, he said, though without any hope of receiving an answer:
"If I could only know to whom or what I owe this incarceration it might ease my mind; might, perhaps, enable me to confute the charge that in years to come may be brought against me. Can you not help me!--me, a brother soldier?"
Bluet and Pierre had left the chapel with the furniture and bedding, so that they were alone now, and the Lieutenant, glancing round the place, said softly:
"Have you no suspicion? Can you not guess? Does not your memory point to one whom you have injured?"
"My memory," replied Bertie, "points to one who has injured me and those I love so deeply that, if had the power, he would have caused me to be sent here. But even his devilish malignity could not procure him that. He cannot have the power."