"Will you tell them," continued Castelnau, "the motives which dictate your advice?"
"Alas! I have not the right to do it."
"How can you expect me to yield to your representations, then? Should I not be bitterly reproached for having thus, for a single word, destroyed our hopes, which were almost certainty? Howsoever vast and well-deserved is the confidence we all have in you, Monsieur de Montgommery, still a man is but a man, and may be deceived, no matter how good his intentions. If no one is allowed to consider and pass judgment upon your reasons, we shall certainly be obliged to neglect your counsel."
"Then beware!" rejoined Gabriel, harshly; "on your head alone be the responsibility for all the calamities that may ensue!"
Castelnau was struck with the accent with which the count uttered these words.
"Monsieur de Montgommery," said he, "light has suddenly come to me, and I think I can descry the true state of affairs. You have either been intrusted with or have surmised some secret which you are not permitted to disclose. You have some important information as to the probable result of our enterprise,—that we have been betrayed, for instance. Am I not right?"
"I did not say that!" cried Gabriel, eagerly.
"Or else," continued Castelnau, "you saw your friend, the Duc de Guise, on your way here, and he, in ignorance of your fellowship with us, has given you an insight into the real state of things."
"Nothing I have said can have given rise to any such supposition!" cried Gabriel.
"Or again," Castelnau went on, "you have, as you passed through Amboise, noticed preparations being made, overheard conversations, or induced confidences,—in short, our plot is discovered!"