DIANE.
Take heart, dear father! Does not Paul Kauvar, strong and true, stand between us and danger!
DUKE.
Yes; but 'tis hard that I, a peer of France, should owe my daughter's life to a peasant's son—a workman!
DIANE.
A, workman with a brush so potent that the noblest born do honour to his art. What would have been our fate but for his devotion?
DUKE.
He's a plebeian—a Republican! The sense of my obligation to him—the enemy of my race—is almost unendurable. Ah, but for you I should long since have braved the scaffold and buried humiliation in the grave.
NANETTE.
[Hurrying in.]