Madame Diane too fell back upon her couch with a gesture of terror.
"Yes, Sire," replied Gabriel, calmly; "I am the Vicomte de Montgommery, who, in exchange for the service which he will render you by maintaining the defence of St. Quentin for a week, asks you for nothing but his father's liberty."
"Your father, Monsieur!" said the king. "Your father is dead, has disappeared. What do I know about him? I don't know, I'm sure, where your father is."
"But I do, Sire; I know," replied Gabriel, choking down a terrible dread. "My father has been in the Châtelet for eighteen years past, awaiting the divine gift of death; or the royal gift of mercy. My father is alive; I am certain of it. As to his crime, of that I know nothing."
"You know nothing of it?" the king asked, frowning darkly.
"I know nothing of it, Sire; but surely it should have been a serious offence to have deserved so long an imprisonment. But it could not have been an unpardonable one, since it did not merit death. Sire, listen. In eighteen years justice has had time to slumber and clemency to awake. Human passions, whether evil or good, do not resist so long as that. My father, who was a vigorous man when he entered his prison, will come out of it old and feeble. However guilty he may have been, has not his expiation been ample? And even if it should happen that his punishment was too severe, is he not too weak to remember? Restore to liberty, Sire, a poor prisoner, who will henceforth be of no consequence in the world. Remember, O Christian king, the words of the Christian creed, and forgive the sins of another that your own sins may be forgiven!"
These last words were uttered in a meaning tone which caused the king and Madame de Valentinois to look at each other in anxious and terrified inquiry.
But Gabriel chose only to touch delicately upon this sore spot in their consciences, and made haste to continue,—
"Please take notice, Sire, that I address you as an obedient and devoted subject. I have not said to you, 'My father was not tried; my father was secretly condemned without an opportunity to be heard in his own defence; and such injustice seems much like revenge. So I, his son, am about to appeal boldly to the nobility of France from this secret judgment which has been pronounced upon him. I am about to declare from the house-tops to every one who wears a sword the insult which has been offered to us all in the person of one gentleman—'"
Henri moved uneasily in his seat.