Standing there, did she remember those who, one by one, had betrayed her? Those who first whispered to her that love of country was a narrow creed; those who taught her to abhor violence, and then failed at the test—Bazard, firing to kill, going down to death under the merciless lance of an Uhlan; Buckhurst, guilty of every crime that attracted him; and now Sylvia, her friend, false to the salt she had eaten, false to the roof above her, false, utterly false to all save the land of her nativity.
And she, Éline de Trécourt, a soldier’s daughter and a Frenchwoman, had been used as a shield by those who were striking her own mother-land—the country she once had denied; the country whose frontiers she knew not in her zeal for limitless brotherhood; the blackened, wasted country she had seen at Strasbourg; the land for which the cuirassiers of Morsbronn had died!
“What have I done?” she cried, brokenly—“what have I done that this shame should come upon me?”
“You have done nothing,” I said, “neither for good nor evil in this crisis. But Sylvia has; Sylvia the spy. That a man should give up his life for a friend is good; that a woman offer hers for her country is better. What has it cost her? The friendship of the woman she worships—you, madame! It has cost her that already, and the price may include her life and the life of the man she loves. She has done her duty; the sacrifice is still burning; I pray it may spare her and spare him.”
I walked to the door and laid my hand on the brass knob. 362
“The world is merciless to failures,” I said. “Yet even a successful spy is scarcely tolerated among the Philistines; a captured spy is a horror for friends to forget and for enemies to destroy in righteous indignation. Madame, I know, for I have served your country in Algiers as a spy,... not from patriotism, for I am an alien, but because I was fitted for it in my line of duty. Had I been caught I should have looked for nothing but contempt from France; from the Kabyle, for neither admiration nor mercy. I tell you this that you may understand my respect for this woman, whose motives are worthy of it.”
The Countess looked at me scornfully. “It is well,” she said, “for those who understand and tolerate treachery to condone it. It is well that the accused be judged by their peers. We of Trécourt know only one tongue. But that is the language of truth, monsieur. All else is foreign.”
“Where did the nobility learn this tongue—to our exclusion?” I asked, bluntly.
“When our forefathers faced the tribunals!” she flashed out. “Did you ever hear of a spy among us? Did you ever hear of a lie among us?”
“You have been taught history by your peers, madame,” I said, with a bow; “I have been taught history by mine.”