Never in any struggle had the presence of Satan and of Almighty God been more plainly visible.
A conscience had furnished the arena for this combat. It was the conscience of Lantenac.
And again it was renewed, more desperate, and possibly more decisively than ever, in another conscience,—in the conscience of Gauvain.
What a battle-field is the mind of man!
Our thoughts, like gods, monsters, or giants, hold us in their power.
Sometimes those terrible wrestlers trample our very soul beneath their feet.
Gauvain was thinking.
The Marquis de Lantenac, hemmed in, blockaded, condemned, outlawed, confined like a wild beast in a circus, held like a nail in a vice, immured in his own home that had changed into a prison, encompassed on every side by a wall of iron and fire, had eluded his enemies and stolen away. He had effected a miraculous escape. He had achieved a masterpiece,—the most difficult of all accomplishments in a war like this,—flight. He had regained possession of the forest to intrench himself therein, of the district where he would renew the combat, and of the impenetrable shadows among which he might vanish from sight. Once more he had become formidable, ever on the wing, a knight-errant whose presence boded evil; the captain of invisible forces, the leader of men who dwell beneath the ground, the master of the woods. Gauvain was victorious, but Lantenac was free. Henceforth Lantenac was safe, his career unfettered, asylums without number from which to choose. He was intangible, unapproachable, inaccessible. This lion, caught in a snare, had forced his way out, and now behold he had come back to it.
The Marquis de Lantenac had voluntarily, impelled only by his free will, left the shades of the forest, where safety and freedom awaited him, to return to the most frightful danger; first, Gauvain had seen it himself, rushing with fearless spirit into the flames that threatened to engulf him, and again descending that ladder that was to deliver him into the hands of his enemies,—the same ladder that offered escape to others, but to him absolute ruin.
And why had he done this?