"It is impossible, your Excellency. It is the man who sat on the bridge with the curé when we rode into Montvert--the man who returned to Alais with us. Also, I have spoken with him in Montpellier when your Excellency made him welcome at the Intendancy."
Beneath his lips Baville muttered a bitter imprecation as the young officer recalled this fact. It was, he saw now, a fatal error to have committed. Yet--yet he had done it of set purpose, for a reason. No, he would dwell no more on that. And now weeks had passed since Urbaine's disappearance. She must be dead, he and his wife had told each other a thousand times by night and day.
"Every hope is gone," he said to her more than once, "every hope. She was mine--known to a hundred mountain refugees from Montpellier to be ours. They would not spare her. There is nothing left but vengeance, if he, that kinsman of the de Rochebazons, ever falls into our hands, as he must, as he must. They can not triumph forever. Can not win in the end."
Madame l'Intendante came in to him now as he sat in his room, a gentle, handsome woman on whose face the grief she felt within was very plainly apparent; came in, and, touching his forehead softly with her hand, sat down by his side.
"Nicole," she said, "a thought has come to me that--that--my God that I should have to say it!--if Urbaine is still alive, might lead to her rescue."
"A thought!" he exclaimed, his face brightening. "A thought! What thought? Yet what can a thousand thoughts avail? She is Baville's. That dooms her."
"Mon mari, suppose--only suppose--they have not slain her--nay, deny me not," as her husband made an impatient movement, "suppose they have not slain her yet. Remember, she would be a great hostage, and they, these rebels, boast they seek not warfare, but only peace--concessions; offer to lay down their arms if--if--all they ask for their unhappy, mistaken religion is granted."
"Well," Baville replied, yet looking eagerly at her, "well, what then?"
"To bring about a truce, obtain those concessions. They may have spared her life, if only for a time, if only for a time," she repeated, sobbing now.
"Even though they have done so," her husband replied, "concessions are impossible, though I myself desired them. Julien is maddened at his total failure; he will grant none. Montrevel comes full of pride at gaining his long-desired bâton. It is not to make peace, grant concessions, that he is on his way. Rather to cause more slaughter, extermination. And for her--there," and his eyes wandered toward the direction where, hundreds of leagues away, Paris and the great white palace of Versailles lay, "will she grant any?"