"Well, then, why accept exile when it is in your power to avoid it? What do you place above your country?"
"Conscience."
This answer made him thoughtful. However, he resumed.
"But on reflection your conscience will approve of what you will have done."
"No."
"Why?"
"I have told you. Because my conscience is so constituted that it puts nothing above itself. I feel it upon me as the headland can feel the lighthouse which is upon it. All life is an abyss, and conscience illuminates it around me."
"And I also," he exclaimed—and I affirm that nothing could be more sincere or more loyal than his tone—"and I also feel and see my conscience. It approves of what I am doing. I appear to be betraying Louis; but I am really doing him a service. To save him from a crime is to save him. I have tried every means. There only remains this one, to arrest him. In coming to you, in acting as I do, I conspire at the same time against him and for him, against his power, and for his honor. What I am doing is right."
"It is true," I said to him. "You have a generous and a lofty aim."
And I resumed,—