"He was as much in the pay of La Truaumont as La Truaumont was in mine. And he is of the canaille. I could have no intercourse with him. Had I required a tool I should not have taken a dirty one."
"Dirty tools, or weapons, can be used as well as clean ones. And--in conspiracies--the tools are never clean. But there is still another Norman. The woman by your side, near you. She calls herself the Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville. She is known to be deeply involved in this vile plot. She was arrested in the lodge you had lent her and which was in your possession as Grand Veneur. She went to Basle at your bidding to meet Van den Enden on the subject of that plot. She is your accomplice. Yet you learnt nothing of it from her. Surely that is strange!"
"She is," De Beaurepaire said, while as he did so he turned towards where Emérance sat separated from him by only a little space, and looked her full in the face, "a woman whom I love. One whom, when we escape from this accursed net you are endeavouring to fling around us, I will love and cherish till my last hour."
"Mon amour!" Emérance breathed rather than murmured between her parted lips.
And the man heard that breath, as perhaps did some of the judges sitting near the prisoner.
"Yet," La Reynie said, "loving her thus, you tell us you know not of what she was vowed to, namely the destruction of the King, of his throne, of France. You did not know the secret of this woman whom you love, the woman who, you think, loves you!"
"Think!" again whispered Emérance, her eyes on La Reynie now. "Think!"
While De Beaurepaire, speaking at the same time, used the same word.
"Think!" he said. "Think that she loves me! La Reynie, do you think there is any man who does not know when a woman truly loves him? If so, then it is you who have never loved or been loved."
As he spoke, D'Aligre shot a glance at Laisné de la Marguerie. "The riposte is deadly," the latter scrawled on a paper in front of him, a paper which the President could see. For La Reynie's wife was a shrew who was reported to have married him for anything rather than love.