"I am not defending him, Martin," said Gabriel; "but we must agree that his brain is full of expedients, and that if he had applied himself to earning an honest living with half the skill—"
"He's an infamous villain!" cried Arnauld, vehemently.
"How severe you are upon him to-day!" replied Gabriel. "But I was thinking to myself as I came along, that after all he has not caused anybody's death; that if his condemnation is pronounced in a few hours, he will surely be hanged within a week; that capital punishment is perhaps an excessive penalty for his crimes, and that in short we might, if you choose, ask for mercy to be shown him."
"Mercy for him!" Arnauld du Thill repeated with some hesitation.
"It requires thought, I know," said Gabriel; "but come now,—you have thought about it; what do you say?"
Arnauld, with his chin in one hand, and rubbing his cheek with the other, remained for some seconds pensive without replying; but at last, having made up his mind, he said firmly,—
"No, no! no mercy! That will be much better."
"Oho!" replied Gabriel, "I did not know you were so vindictive, Martin; you are not generally so, and only yesterday you were pitying your adversary, and would have asked nothing better than to save his life."
"Yesterday, yesterday," muttered Arnauld, "yesterday he had not played us this last trick, which is to my mind more shameful than all the others."
"That is very true," Gabriel remarked. "So you are very decidedly of the opinion that the culprit should die?"