"And that his proper title is not de Lincy, but that he is the son of a merchant in Canada who is no noble?" Collinot added.
"You know nothing against him yourself?" Beauveau asked of Villerai.
"Nothing myself, very true."
"You bring evidence, then?"
"My Lord—Marshal we have no evidence. I throw myself on your goodness—I had some papers with the contents of which I am unacquainted—but where they are I—I—pardon me your Excellency—this is a very unfortunate affair."
"I think so, Monsieur de Villerai. Your friends have brought to trial a perfectly innocent man—they have allowed him, for several months, to remain under the intolerable vexations of the ban of society, and to stand deprived of his birthright as a gentleman—have destroyed him at Court—have almost blighted his career—have forced him to expose his life to the ocean, to take far-off and highly perilous journeys to collect his defences—and have compelled him more than once to brave mortal combat. They have done all this, as it appears, while his claims were perfectly regular, and while they themselves fail to produce the slightest atom of evidence against him beyond the unsupported assertions of their own family. What am I, as patron of this regiment, and a military man of sixty years' experience, to say to this state of things?"
"Excuse my—my Lord," de Villerai cried in desperation. "I said our proofs are lost."
"It was your duty to have properly kept them. The opportunity for trial has been given. The accused has responded and cleared himself. You may depart, sir."
"Monsieur de Lincy," continued he, addressing the latter, with an alteration from his severe tone to the kindest of voices, "it almost moves me to tears to think of the indignities to which you have been subjected. Your honour is absolved, and Major Collinot is requested to make entry of this fact on the registers of the company, to avail you in case these charges should ever be repeated. You are reinstalled with your full rank and record, and moreover, in order that your reinstallment may be unequivocal in the eyes of the public, I appoint you my special aide-de-camp for the review of this morning. Horse yourself and report at my apartments."
Lecour had stood throughout the interview perfectly motionless—almost statuesque, except a slight clinching of the hands at times. His feelings, however, were at the highest possible tension, and his eyes observant of the slightest changes on the faces of those concerned, and when he found de Villerai—who was a stranger to him—so helpless, a feeling of triumph unexpectedly possessed him. He knew, of course, about the Record—- divined that de Villerai had been entrusted with it—in fact, through the mysterious means related, it was safe above their heads locked in his own sleeping chamber. But what he had been uncertain of was what sort of a man the Quartermaster would turn out to be as a representative of de Léry—what kind of a case he would make without the writings—how much of them he would recite—how that recital would be received by the tribunal—and whether the tribunal would have any regard whatever to the evidence or condemn him by some instinct of caste prejudice. While turning these thoughts over like lightning in his mind, they were brought to a standstill by the pronouncement of Marshal de Beauveau and the sudden relief and violent sense of gratitude produced by the old soldier's sympathetic address to himself.