"No, I will not sign. We," and the Duke's hand caught the lace at his breast in its grasp, as though its owner were stirred by some internal agitation, "we--ah!--we of our line have testified in the past all that we have felt towards those of his faith. I will not have it said that another Guise should sign the finding of this Court against a man whom he respects, no matter how much that man has erred, because he is a Protestant."
"I, too, respect him," De Violaine said, even as he laid his hand, unseen by the others, upon the young Duke's and pressed it. "But I myself am a Protestant, and also the President of this inquiry. Yet I shall sign. Neither will I have it said that, being of the prisoner's faith, I used that bond between us to shield him from the punishment he has brought on his own head."
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
To die. That was the sentence, awaiting only confirmation from Tallard to be at once carried into effect. To die--though, because he had once been that which his judges were now, because the "one touch of nature" had made these French soldiers and that English soldier kin; because, too, his quiet, manly bearing, his restraint from all plea for mercy, had touched the hearts of those who sentenced him--not by the rope, but by the hands of soldiers. Not to be hanged, as Francbois and Stuven were to be, but to be shot as he stood upright before a platoon of soldiers; his eyes unbandaged, so that he might look them and the death they dealt him as straight in the face as he had often before looked the enemy and death.
Also, it may be, the hearts of those judges had been softened to this extent by the avowal of his love for the stately, beautiful woman whom some of them--De Guise, De Violaine, D'Aubignay--had seen; whom these, at least, had heard cry "I love him, I love him, I love him!" Remembering that cry of Sylvia's, remembering how in that moment, so fraught with evil to both their destinies, the girl had cast aside all sense of mock diffidence, and how nobly she had avowed her love while recognising that, in doing so, no reproach of want of reserve could come anigh her, De Violaine, as he signed the finding of the Court over which he had presided, muttered to himself:
"To have heard Radegonde thus proclaim her love for me would have caused this sentence to fall harmless. Harmless! Nay, rather, welcome."
While, as for De Guise, duke and peer of France though he might be, with, in his veins, the old illustrious blood of Lorraine and Burgundy--what would he not have given to hear one woman utter that cry on his behalf from the depths of her heart? He who might, doubtless, obtain such avowals from many a nobly born woman hovering round the garish, bizarre Court of the great King, yet would, in doing so, scarce be able to bring himself to believe in the truth of even one of them.
Some days had passed since Bevill had heard his doom pronounced by De Violaine in a voice full of emotion; days in which he had stood, sometimes for hours together, at the window of the great cell, which was in truth a room, gazing across the town. Across the town, since the citadel was built on the brow of a hill that overhung it, to where, perhaps, he dreamt that, even at the last moment, succour might be expected to come. For though he did not know that the Comtesse de Valorme and Sylvia had by now contrived to escape out of Liége, he knew that this was the direction in which Marlborough must be; that, if there was any hope to be looked for, it was thence it must arrive. Yet he knew, too, that, if it came, also must it come swiftly.
"De Violaine said," he had told himself a hundred times, "that the finding of the Court would be sent at once to the Marshal Tallard for his approval. Ah, well! the time will not be long. With Marlborough as near as he must be by now, Tallard cannot be far away. Whispers filter even through these prison walls; the soldiers amongst whom I am allowed to walk below, and to get the air, are gloomy and depressed. Also, I have caught ere now the name of Venloo on their lips. If Venloo has fallen, then Liége will be the next. It will be its turn. But mine!" Bevill would add, with almost the shadow of a smile upon his face, "will my turn come first?"
"And she, my sweet, my love," he would continue. "What of her? Where is she, what is she doing? Yet why ask, why ponder? She is dreaming, musing, thinking of me now, I know; pitying my fate--it may be endeavouring in some way to avert it. Ah! Sylvia, Sylvia, if ere I go from out this world we might stand face to face again; if I might look once more into those fond, pure eyes, and read therein the love that I must part with, leave behind, death would not seem so bitter and parting be lighter sorrow than I deem it now."