“He has a creature in his pay in my grandfather’s house, and through him he learned my plan. He laid a very clever trap. Although he could have stopped me at any time, he allowed us to go on, that we might be caught in the act. Now he hopes to win my grandfather’s consent to this marriage, and perhaps by that means force it upon me.”
“You shall never marry him,” I said, utterly oblivious of everything, everybody, except Mademoiselle and that fact.
“And why not, pray, Monsieur?” asked the Queen.
“Because, Your Majesty, I shall marry her myself.”
“Indeed!”
“The word of a gentleman, Madame,” I said.
“But are you a gentleman?” asked Marie Antoinette. There was an accent of raillery in her voice that robbed the question of its sting. “One day you masquerade as a sailor. The next day you enter Mademoiselle’s apartments”—she knew all, then!—“as a thief. Today you stand before me as a criminal.”
“I plead guilty to every charge, Madame. I am a sailor, I am a thief. Last night I would have stolen——”
“What, Monsieur?”
“Mademoiselle.”