"Arnaud. Stand aside, my father. Let me meet my cousin face to face."
The priest moved back, and the two soldiers, the officer and the fighting-man, stared into each other's eyes.
"Had I known this, Jean-Marie——" began the commandant; but the figure upon the palliasse, straining from death as a dog from the leash, broke in upon him.
"Cousin, you knew. When I have passed have you not averted your eyes, ashamed of the man who has had neither the wit nor the opportunity to rise? You have made yourself great, and I—but this is no time for calling up the past. I am spent. Come to me, cousin—nearer. Why, commandant, art afraid of a dying man?"
"Is he dying?"
"He is in God's hands," the priest answered; and the woman grumbled: "Yes, yes, and a long time lying there, keeping me from my bed."
"Out!" said Roussilac, turning upon her. "Out, and repeat not what you may have heard."
The woman slunk away frightened.
"Ah, cousin, that old manner," smiled Jean-Marie. "So spoke you as a boy. They said you would find greatness. My father would say, 'He is a Brutus. Would condemn his own son.' I know not who Brutus was, but my father was a learned man."
He coughed terribly and lay back gasping.