"You acknowledge that there was a plot?" La Reynie exclaimed, echoing the President's question.
"I have said," Emérance replied. "Yet no plot against France or the King."
"Explain."
"He," her eyes turned softly towards her lover and then re-turned swiftly toward the Judges, "wanted money. His charges and expenses were great, as you all know. No need to say more of that. As for myself, I was poor, horribly, bitterly poor, almost at starvation's door, for the reason I have but now told you. That one," her eyes looking from underneath their lids at Van den Enden, "would do aught for money; would betray, steal, murder for the money he always wanted. La Truaumont--well! he is dead. Of him I will but say that he was ambitious. He had been a good soldier yet, like many another soldier as good as he, he had been forgotten, passed over, set aside. We all wanted money. The others--that assassin, or would be assassin, there," looking at Fleur de Mai, "was but a hireling, a varlet, to any who could pay him."
"It was my mind, mine alone," she continued, "which conceived the plot. Mine," and Emérance smote her breast as she spoke, as though to force conviction into the minds of those who heard her. "Mine! Spain hates the King, France, you, I, all of us in whose veins French blood runs--you well know why. So, too, does Holland, for baser, meaner reasons; she hates us because she goes down before us as autumn leaves go down before the storm. Because her Stadtholder, William, can do naught against France. Therefore, since France could not be conquered, defeated, humiliated in the field, other ways were thought of. Shot and steel were useless. It remained to try gold."
That Emérance had aroused the interest of her audience, of the Judges, she knew by now. She had touched that chord, which, as she was well aware, never fails to respond in the hearts of her countrymen to the praise of their country. She knew this, she saw it in their proud, self-satisfied glances as she dwelt on the inferiority of Spain and Holland before France. Only--she asked herself--would they believe? Would this attempt, this last chance, enable the man she loved--of herself she did not think!--to obtain earthly salvation.
"The scheme was tried," she continued. "Learning as I did through La Truaumont that there was a large sum of Spanish money ready for those who would betray France to them, I conceived the idea, not of betraying, but of pretending to betray, France. I was, as I have been termed, une fine Normande; the Normans were embittered against the King for his treatment of the province. The instruments were ready to my hand; the faggots were laid; the spark to ignite them alone was needed. You know the rest, or almost know it. But some part you do not know. His, De Beaurepaire's name was used without his knowledge, the money was obtained from De Montérey, yet not one sol ever reached the Prince's hands. We hoped that, when the enemies of France learnt that we had tricked them, robbed them if you will, the plot would be abandoned without De Beaurepaire ever knowing of the use we had made of him."
"The love for him does not appear in this," sneered Laisné de la Marguerie. "The Prince's name was used unrighteously, judging by your own story, while even the money you say you received was not shared by him."
"Where therefore did it go?" D'Aligre asked, grasping the point which his more astute brother judge had made. "It was a large sum?"
"It went to Normandy if it ever came into France," Van den Enden exclaimed, tottering to his feet in his desire to be listened to by the Judges. "But it never came. Never. This woman, this adventuress, has lied to save her lover and herself. There was no plot to either overthrow France or hoodwink Spain and Holland. There was no money whatever forthcoming.