"You know who and what she is?" La Reynie continued savagely. "You know her past?"
"No, only her present. Her past is nothing to me. I had no share in it."
"You should have informed yourself of it ere you allowed yourself to love her. You could have learnt that she was, with La Truaumont, the heart and soul of this conspiracy. A woman ruined by extravagant living and willing to make money by any means."
"'Tis false," Emérance exclaimed, looking up at the Judges for the first time and also speaking aloud for the first time. "My husband left me with some small means. But--because after treating me cruelly for months, he was found dead in his bed, for which I was tried at Rouen for having poisoned him and was at once acquitted and absolved--not one sol or denier have I ever been able to obtain from his kinsmen. Extravagant living! I have never yet known what it was to have a handful of gold pistoles to spend, or fling into the river, if it pleased me so to do."
"Madame," La Reynie said quietly, "this is not your final interrogatory. Later I will deal with you."
After which he again addressed De Beaurepaire, saying: "Monsieur le Prince, the man, Van den Enden, states that you have often said in his presence, and that of others, when speaking of his Majesty the King: 'We shall have him yet. We shall hold him.'"
"He lies," De Beaurepaire said, shrugging his shoulders with superbly assumed disdain. "As for the others, who are they and where are they? Produce them."
"Also," La Reynie continued, ignoring this challenge, "he states that you threatened to kill him if he did not act entirely as you bade him."
"Pah!" exclaimed De Beaurepaire, with another contemptuous shrug which, with the exclamation itself, spoke volumes. "If you choose to believe such babble as this, uttered by such a creature as that, you may do so," was what the shrug and the word conveyed.
"Do you deny, monsieur," La Reynie continued, "that you ever uttered the expression, 'I would die content if I could once draw my sword against the King in a strong revolution'?"