“To insult the fallen, sir, is worthy of the new regime, whose representative you are, Enfine! We must take it, I suppose, as we take everything else in these disordered times—with a bent head and a meek submission.”
“From the little that I have seen, Citoyenne,” he answered, very coldly, roused in his turn, “it rather seems that you take things on your knees and with appeals for mercy.”
“Monsieur,” she cried, and her eyes now met his in fearless anger, “if you persist in these gratuitous insults I shall leave you.”
He laughed in rude amusement, and put on his hat. The spell that for a moment her beauty had cast over him when first she had appeared had been attenuating. It now broke suddenly, and as he covered himself his whole manner changed.
“Is this interview of my seeking?” he asked. “It is your brother I am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the woods whilst you, his sister, come here to intercede with me for his wretched life? Pah! In the old days you aroused my hatred by your tyrannies and your injustices; to-day you weary and disgust me by your ineffable cowardices, from that gentleman in Paris who now calls himself Orleans-Egalite downwards.”
“Monsieur,” she began But he was not yet done. His cheeks were flushed with a reflection of the heart within.
“Citoyenne, I have a debt to discharge, and I will discharge it in full. Intercessions are vain with me. I cannot forget. Send me your brother within ten minutes to meet me here, man to man, and he shall have—all of you shall have—the chance that lies in such an encounter. But woe unto every man at Bellecour if he should fail me. Citoyenne, you know my mind.”
But she overlooked the note of dismissal in his voice.
“You speak of a debt that you must discharge,” said she, with no whit less heat than he had exhibited. “You refer to the debt of vengeance which you look to discharge by murdering that boy, my brother. But do you not owe me a debt also?”
“You?” he questioned. “My faith! Unless it be a debt of scorn, I know of none.”