“Yes, Monsieur le Duc,” he said.
“And where was he?”
“In Mademoiselle’s—” he hesitated.
“Speak!” thundered the old man.
“Bedchamber, Monsieur.”
“Mon Dieu!” cried the Duke, his composure giving way at last. He put his face in his hands with a movement singularly like that of Mademoiselle a short time before.
Is it that Master Shakespeare in great crises voices the universal cry of the human heart? For like the father of Hero in “Much Ado About Nothing”—and indeed the whole affair was somewhat similar in my mind—the Duke finally broke forth:
“‘Hath no man here a sword for me?’”
I have not the sentence exactly, but I give the sense of it, and I pitied him from the bottom of my heart. But the love of the young is often cruel to the old.
“My grandfather! my grandfather!” cried Mademoiselle, sinking to his feet, “think not bitterly of me! This gentleman has told the truth. I had but spoken a few words to him when you came. He did me a great service. I concealed him.”