"Poor woman! poor martyr!" said Gabriel, taking her hand in his.
"A month later," continued the nurse, "I carried you to Montgommery, in obedience to my husband's dying instructions.
"In the sequel it turned out as Monsieur de Montmorency had predicted. The inexplicable disappearance of the Comte de Montgommery and his squire made a noise at court for about a week; then the talk began to die out; and finally, the expected arrival of the Emperor Charles V., who was on his way through France to chastise the people of Ghent, became the universal subject of conversation.
"It was in May of the same year, five months after your father's disappearance, that Diane de Castro was born."
"Yes," rejoined Gabriel, thoughtfully; "and did Madame de Poitiers belong to my father? Did she love the dauphin after him or simultaneously?—sombre questions these, which cannot be answered satisfactorily by the slanderous gossip of an idle court. But my father is alive! He must be alive! And Aloyse, I will find him. There are two men living in me now,—a son and a lover, who will find a way to discover his living tomb."
"God grant it!" said Aloyse.
"And have you learned nothing since, nurse," said Gabriel, "as to the prison where these wretches may have buried my father?"
"Nothing, Monseigneur; and the only clew that we have on that point is the remark of Monsieur de Montmorency as reported by Perrot,—that the governor of the Châtelet was a devoted friend of his, and could be depended upon."
"The Châtelet!" cried Gabriel; "the Châtelet!"
For like a flash of lightning his memory brought before him all at once the gloomy, desolate old man, who might never utter a word, and whom he had seen with such a strange agitation of the heart, in one of the deepest dungeons of the royal prison.