"I will withdraw," said Gabriel.
"Pardon me, Monsieur le Vicomte," said Jean, "your presence at our interview is not only useful, but necessary; for without your concurrence the projects which I am about to confide to Pierre will have no chance of success."
"I will listen to you in that case, my friend," said Gabriel, relapsing into his dreamy melancholy.
"Yes, Monseigneur," said the bourgeois, "yes, listen to us; and as you listen, you will raise your head once more with hope, and perhaps (who knows?) with joy."
Gabriel smiled mournfully at the thought that joy would be an unknown friend to him while he remained powerless to do aught to obtain his father's liberty or to make clear his right to Diane's love. Nevertheless, the brave youth turned toward Jean, and motioned to him to proceed.
Then Jean looked gravely at Pierre.
"Cousin," said he, "and more than cousin,—brother,—it is for you to speak first, in order to show Monsieur d'Exmès what reliance may be placed upon your patriotism. So tell us, Pierre, in what sentiments toward France your father brought you up, and was himself reared by his father. Tell us whether you have ever become English at heart, even though you have been English by force of events for above two hundred years. Tell us, last of all, whether if the emergency should arise, you would consider that you owed your blood and your assistance to the old country of your ancestors, or to the new allegiance which has been forced upon you."
"Jean," replied the other bourgeois, with as solemn a mien as his cousin, "I do not know what I should think or how I should feel if I bore an English name, and came of English stock; but I do know by experience that when a family has once been French, whether for a moment only or for more than two centuries, every other domination becomes insupportable to the members of that family, and seems to them as hard and bitter as slavery or banishment; furthermore, that one of my forefathers, Jean, who saw Calais fall into English hands, never spoke of France before his son without weeping, or of England without bitter hate. His son did the same with his own son; and this twofold sentiment of regret and detestation has been handed down from generation to generation without losing any of its strength or changing its form. The air of our old bourgeois houses is a great preservative. The Pierre Peuquoy of two centuries ago lives again in the Pierre Peuquoy of to-day; and with the same French name, I have the same French heart, Jean. The insult as well as the grief is as of yesterday. Say not that I have two countries, Jean; there is, and there can ever be, but one! And if the time comes when I must choose between the country to which men have made me submit and the country which God has given me, be sure that I shall not hesitate."
"You hear, Monseigneur!" cried Jean, turning to Vicomte d'Exmès.
"Yes, my friend, yes, I hear; and it is grand, it is noble!" was Gabriel's reply, albeit he seemed still a little distraught.