"Yes, Sire; and you said, did you not, that if it did hold out, you would endow it with freedom and wealth?"
"I say it again," said the king.
"Very well, Sire; and would you refuse to the man who should make its holding out possible what you would accord to the town which held out? To the man whose energetic will should infect the whole city, and who would not surrender it until the last piece of the wall crumbles under the enemy's cannon? The favor which this man shall ask at your hands, this man who shall have given you this week's respite, and thus preserved your kingdom, shall he ask it in vain, Sire, and will you chaffer about an act of mercy with, him who has given you back an empire?"
"No, by Heaven!" cried the king; "and whatever a king has to give that man shall have."
"A bargain, Sire; for not only can a king give, but he can forgive as well. And it is a pardon, and not titles or gold which this man will ask at your hands."
"But who is he? Where is this deliverer?" said the king.
"He stands before you, Sire. It is I, the humble captain of your Guards, but who feel in my heart and my arm a superhuman strength, which shall help me to prove that I make no vain boast in undertaking to save at one and the same time my country and my father."
"Your father, Monsieur d'Exmès!" said the astonished king.
"I am not Monsieur d'Exmès," said Gabriel. "I am Gabriel de Montgommery, son of Comte Jacques de Montgommery, whom you ought to remember, Sire."
"The son of the Comte de Montgommery!" cried the king, rising and turning pale.