‘Ha! that is good,’ he answered, sinking back again in his chair. ‘For the moment—but I knew that I could depend on you. And now where is he? What have you done with him? He knows much, and the sooner I know it the better. Are your people bringing him, M. de Berault?’
‘No, Monseigneur,’ I stammered, with dry lips. His very good-humour, his benignity, appalled me. I knew how terrible would be the change, how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the truth. And yet that I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any man! With that thought I spurred myself, as it were, to the task. ‘No, your Eminence,’ I said, with the energy of despair. ‘I have not brought him, because I have set him free.’
‘Because you have—WHAT?’ he exclaimed. He leaned forward as he spoke, his hands on the arm of the chair; and his eyes growing each instant smaller, seemed to read my soul.
‘Because I have let him go,’ I repeated.
‘And why?’ he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.
‘Because I took him unfairly,’ I answered.
‘Because, Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should have been given to one who was not. I took him, if you must know,’ I continued impatiently—the fence once crossed I was growing bolder—‘by dogging a woman’s steps and winning her confidence and betraying it. And whatever I have done ill in my life—of which you were good enough to throw something in my teeth when I was last here—I have never done that, and I will not!’
‘And so you set him free?’
‘Yes.’
‘After you had brought him to Auch?’