"Shall I take his excellency's parole?" asked the General, "or will your majesty?"
"Neither, sir," answered the King. "You will call a guard, and remove him to the Tower immediately."
The General, after looking at the King for a moment in blank amazement, bowed, and despatched the officer for some files of the Palace Watch. A distressing silence followed his departure, which Turbo seemed to enjoy immensely, till at last he broke it himself.
"I do not wish," said he, with affected humility, "to complain of your majesty's vigour. In my old pupil I can only warmly admire it. But as your majesty has adopted this spirited course, I would beg the privilege of the meanest prisoner, and demand on what charge I am arrested."
"You may inform the prisoner," said the King, addressing Dolabella, "that he is arrested on confession of murder and abduction."
"Your majesty is extremely kind," answered Turbo, "and it is only right that I should show my sense of your clemency by letting you know that you are acting in error both of law and fact."
"I must beg," said Kophetua, "that all further communication between us shall be made through the proper channel."
"As your majesty pleases," replied the Chancellor. "But as your experience in these matters is not extensive, I thought I could save your majesty from an undignified position, and from the publication of matters which you would prefer to have concealed. If you would read this note, sire, you would see at once what I mean."
Kophetua was, in spite of himself, impressed by the calmness of the Chancellor, and, moreover, was sensible of considerable curiosity to see what Mlle de Tricotrin could have written to him. So he took the note, and read it with a shock that he was not fully sensible of till some time after.
"You see, sire," said the Chancellor, "this girl had been lawfully assigned to me in writing. Your majesty is too well aware of the paternal nature of the laws regulating domestic service in this country to be ignorant that I was within my rights in using reasonable violence to compel a servant so assigned to assume her duties. The interference of the gendarmerie was, therefore, quite illegal, and the homicide which I unfortunately committed a justifiable act of self-defence."