"You mean that you have been insulted, and are resolved to disgrace the man that has insulted you?" asked De la Roche.
"You have guessed," said Eugene, deliberately, as he unwound the long lash of the whip, and tried its strength.
"But Eugene," said De Conti, earnestly, "remember that such degradation is only to be wiped out with blood, and that your cloth will not protect you from the consequences of so unpriestly an act."
Eugene's eyes flashed fire. "Hear me," said he. "If my miserable garb could prevent me from vindicating my honor as a man, I would rend it into fragments, and cast it away as the livery of a coward. A man's dress is not a symbol of his soul; and so help me, God! this brown cassock shall some day be transformed into the panoply of a soldier. But see! The carriage stops, and we are about to taste the joys ineffable of seeing the King of France drive by."
Two outriders in the royal livery were now seen to gallop down the allee, as a signal for all vehicles whatsoever to drive aside until the royal equipages had passed by.
In this manner Louis was accustomed to exhibit himself to the admiring gaze of his subjects, and to bestow upon them the unspeakable privilege of a stray beam from the "son of France." Never had he shed his rays upon a more numerous or more magnificent concourse than the one assembled in the Pre aux Clercs; for the Duchess de Bouillon had just entered with her cortege, and the allee was lined on either side with splendid equipages and their outriders—pages, equestrians, and foot-passengers.
His majesty was gazing around, bowing affably to the crowd, when he perceived the Duchess de Bouillon, and caught her eye. Louis waved his hand, and smiled; and this royal congratulation filled up the measure of Marianna's content. At that moment his face was illumined by an expression of genuine feeling, perhaps a reflection of the light of a love which had shone upon it in the golden morning of his youth.
The king's coach had gone by; following came the equipages of the royal family, and the princes of the blood: then—
"My dear cousin," said Eugene, "be on your guard, and if the glasses of our carriage-windows begin to splinter, close your eyes, for—"
At this moment the coach darted suddenly forward, and took its place behind the royal cortege. There was a tremendous concussion of wheels and shafts, a crash of broken panes, a stamping and struggling of horses; and, above all this din, the frantic oaths of the coachmen that had suffered from the collision.