"Then it is not for love that you pursue Mlle. de Varion?" I said. I now believed, as I had first thought, that the governor had changed his mind after ordering mademoiselle to leave the province, had decided to hold her in durance, and had commissioned De Berquin to detain her, as well as to hunt down me. But I put the question in order to get further time for thought.
"For love, yes; but not for mine!" was the answer.
This startled me. "For that of M. de la Chatre?" I asked, quickly.
"You seem to be curious on this point," said De Berquin, derisively.
"If I am to die," I replied, "you can lose nothing by gratifying my curiosity. If I am to live, I may be the better able to serve you if you gratify it."
"I am not one to refuse the request of a man about to die," he said, with a self-amused look. "It is not La Chatre, the superb, whose amour I have come into this cursed wilderness to serve."
"Then who—?" But I stopped at the beginning of the question, as a new thought came to me. "The secretary!" I said.
"Montignac, the modest and meditative," replied De Berquin.
I might have thought it. What man of his age, however given to deep study and secret ambition, could have been insensible to her beauty, her grace, her gentleness? Such a youth as Montignac would pass a thousand women indifferently, and at last perceive in Mlle. de Varion at first glance the perfections that distinguished her from others of her sex. Doubtless, to him, as to me, she embodied an ideal, a dream, of which he had scarcely dared hope to find the realization. Seeing her at the inn, he had been warmed by her charms at once. He had resolved to avail himself of his power and of her helplessness. Her father in prison, herself an exile without one powerful friend, she would be at his mercy. Forbidden by his duties to leave the governor's side, he could charge De Berquin, in giving the latter the governor's orders concerning myself, with the additional task of securing the person of mademoiselle, that he might woo her at his leisure and in his own way. The governor, ready enough to frighten into an unwarranted exile a woman whose entreaties he feared, would yet not be so ungallant as to give her to his secretary for the asking. But Montignac might safely hold her prisoner, the governor would think that she had left the province, there would be none to rescue her. Such were the acts, designs, and thoughts that I attributed to the reticent, far-seeing, resolute secretary. All passed through my mind in a moment.
And now I feared for mademoiselle as I had not feared before. I never feared a man, or two men at a time, who came with sword in hand; but how is one to meet or even to perceive the blows aimed by men of thought and power? Such as Montignac, inscrutable, patient, ingenious, strong enough to conceal their own passions, which themselves are more intense and far more lasting than the passions of a mere man of fighting, are not easily turned aside from the quest of any object on which they have put their desires. One against whom they have set themselves is never safe from them while they live. Years do not make them either give up or forget. Montignac, by reason of his influence over the governor, had vast resources to employ. He could turn the machinery of government to his own ends, and the trustful governor not suspect. In that slim youth, smooth-faced, pale, repressed, grave, not always taking the trouble to erase from his features the signs of his scorn for ordinary minds, a scorn mingled with a sense of his own power and with a kind of derisive mirth,—in this quiet student I beheld an antagonist more formidable than any against whom I had ever been pitted. In thinking of him, I came at once to regard De Berquin, who still stood facing me with ready sword, and on his face the intention of killing me plainly written, as a very inconsiderable opponent, even when backed by his four ruffians with their varied collection of weapons.