The First Consul's eyes were smiling as I ceased speaking; there was no frown on his brow. The duchesse looked aghast, as if it were inconceivable blasphemy that I should think of aspiring to the comtesse, and the chevalier's face was dark, with an ugly sneer distorting his lips. But I cared little how Consul or duchesse or chevalier took my speech: I cared only for what mademoiselle might think. I glanced quickly at her. Her head was drooping, her long lashes were sweeping her cheek, her face was rosy red, and a half-smile was playing about her mouth. My heart beat high with exultant joy. I turned proudly to the chevalier and awaited the thunderbolt I knew was sure to fall. He, too, had seen mademoiselle's soft and drooping aspect, and the sight had lashed him to fury. But before he had a chance to speak, the First Consul himself spoke with good-natured raillery:
"I think, Citizen Le Moyne, your golden-haired giant makes a very good plea for himself. Suppose I offer him a position on my staff and make a Frenchman of him, and then let the Citizeness de Baloit choose between you? Perhaps her estates would be as safe in his hands as in yours."
Had the First Consul uttered his speech with the purpose of lashing the chevalier to fury and goading him to still greater venom against me, he could have taken no better course to accomplish it.
"Safe!" he hissed. "Safe in the hands of an assassin! You would give mademoiselle and her estates to the man who hid in your closet to attempt your life in your bath! Regardez! the coward—the sneak—the villain! When your Mameluke discovers him he flees. I run to your defense. Does he meet me with his sword like an honorable gentleman? No! he trips me with the foot like a school-boy, and throws me down the stair, to be the laughing-stock of my fellow-officers! Because he is a giant, he falls upon your sentry of small stature and hurls him down the terraces! He calls to his trick horse,—trained in the circus, I do not doubt,—and rides away in the dark, and thinks no one will ever know! But I know. I have seen his tricks in America. He is a clown—a mountebank! No gentleman would touch his hand!"
The chevalier's voice had grown shriller and higher with each word, till he ended in a scream, tearing his hair, rushing up and down the cabinet in his fury, and pointing every epithet with a long finger extended toward me. I could have smiled at such childish rage but that it was too serious a matter to me for smiling. Mademoiselle's eyes were wide with terror and amaze, and the Consul's brow grew darker with every word of the chevalier's.
"Officer, call the guard!" he said in his rasping voice, as soon as the chevalier gave him a chance to speak, and I knew my doom was sealed.
But mademoiselle sprang forward, one arm outstretched to stay the officer, and one extended toward the Consul in supplication.
"No, no, officer, not yet!" she cried, and then to Bonaparte:
"Oh, Citizen Consul, it is all a terrible mistake! I know him well. He could not be guilty of so dreadful a crime! He could not do anything mean or low or dishonorable. There is no gentleman in the world more generous and noble! And the man who denounces him owes his life to him!"
"Look at him, Mademoiselle," said the Consul, harshly, "and see if his looks do not confess him the culprit."