LIX
Juliette breathed so evenly, and lay so long without moving, that P. C. Breagh believed her asleep. Twilight showed nothing but a black shape, vaguely feminine, a pale oval patch represented her face....
Suddenly as before, her eyes opened and met his. She said, following up some previous train of thought:
"It is nobler than the portraits, and yet more pitiless. I speak of the face of my country's enemy.... See you well, Monsieur Breagh ... if I were Our Lady, I would never rise from my knees until Our Lord had saved France!..."
"What would save France?" Carolan asked her. She answered, turning in her rustling couch of leaves:
"Death, striking the hand that slowly strangles her.... Death, freezing the brain that plans her fall.... Death, overtaking the merciless giver of Death to her children.... Nothing else could now save France!..."
He who heard was dumb, knowing that this harping was the very note of madness. She went on, speaking with somber earnestness:
"Always is it that women are accused by men of weakness. Frenchwomen are, in addition, termed 'timid and frivolous.' Yet France has twice been saved by the courage of her daughters.... Remember the holy Jeanne d'Arc, beloved of God and Our Lady ... and Charlotte Corday also, Monsieur!—the courageous citizeness of Caen.... At school I learned her words, spoken before the Revolutionary Tribunal.... 'Me, I have slain one man to save a hundred thousand!...' Why has not France a Charlotte Corday now?"
There was something in her tone that menaced like the flicker of lightning, seen through a rent in stormy wrack. That a creature so frail and slender should dream of heroic vengeance was incredible. One would have expected it from a heroine of the Krimhilde-Brünhilde type. To divert her from the dangerous theme by changing the conversation was impossible. The only thing to do was to feign to doze.