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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Battle Of The Strong, by G. Parker, v6
+#62 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Battle Of The Strong [A Romance of Two Kingdoms], Volume 6.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6235]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BATTLE OF THE STRONG, PARKER, V6 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG
+
+[A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS]
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+The bell on the top of the Cohue Royale clattered like the tongue of a
+scolding fishwife.  For it was the fourth of October, and the opening of
+the Assise d'Heritage.
+
+This particular session of the Court was to proceed with unusual spirit
+and importance, for after the reading of the King's Proclamation, the
+Royal Court and the States were to present the formal welcome of the
+island to Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy; likewise to
+offer a bounty to all Jerseymen enlisting under him.
+
+The island was en fete.  There had not been such a year of sensations
+since the Battle of Jersey.  Long before chicane--chicane ceased clanging
+over the Vier Marchi the body of the Court was filled.  The Governor, the
+Bailly, the jurats, the seigneurs and the dames des fiefs, the avocats
+with their knowledge of the ancient custom of Normandy and the devious
+inroads made upon it by the customs of Jersey, the military, all were in
+their places; the officers of the navy had arrived, all save one and he
+was to be the chief figure of this function.  With each arrival the
+people cheered and the trumpets blared.  The islanders in the Vier Marchi
+turned to the booths for refreshments, or to the printing-machine set up
+near La Pyramide, and bought halfpenny chapsheets telling of recent
+defeats of the French; though mostly they told in ebullient words of the
+sea-fight which had made Philip d'Avranche an admiral, and of his
+elevation to a sovereign dukedom.  The crowds restlessly awaited his
+coming now.
+
+Inside the Court there was more restlessness still.  It was now many
+minutes beyond the hour fixed.  The Bailly whispered to the Governor, the
+Governor to his aide, and the aide sought the naval officers present; but
+these could give no explanation of the delay.  The Comtesse Chantavoine
+was in her place of honour beside the Attorney-General--but Prince Philip
+and his flag-lieutenant came not.
+
+The Comtesse Chantavoine was the one person outwardly unmoved.  What she
+thought, who could tell?  Hundreds of eyes scanned her face, yet she
+seemed unconscious of them, indifferent to them.  What would not the
+Bailly have given for her calmness!  What would not the Greffier have
+given for her importance!  She drew every eye by virtue of something
+which was more than the name of Duchesse de Bercy.  The face, the
+bearing, had an unconscious dignity, a living command and composure: the
+heritage, perhaps, of a race ever more fighters than courtiers, rather
+desiring good sleep after good warfare than luxurious peace.
+
+The silence, the tension grew painful.  A whole half hour had the Court
+waited beyond its time.  At last, however, cheers arose outside, and all
+knew that the Prince was coming.  Presently the doors were thrown open,
+two halberdiers stepped inside, and an officer of the Court announced
+Admiral his Serene Highness Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy.
+
+"Oui-gia, think of that!" said a voice from somewhere in the hall.
+
+Philip heard it, and he frowned, for he recognised Dormy Jamais's voice.
+Where it came from he knew not, nor did any one; for the daft one was
+snugly bestowed above a middle doorway in what was half balcony, half
+cornice.
+
+When Philip had taken his place beside the Comtesse Chantavoine, came the
+formal opening of the Cour d'Heritage.
+
+The Comtesse's eyes fixed themselves upon Philip.  There was that in his
+manner which puzzled and evaded her clear intuition.  Some strange
+circumstance must have delayed him, for she saw that his flag-lieutenant
+was disturbed, and this she felt sure was not due to delay alone.  She
+was barely conscious that the Bailly had been addressing Philip, until he
+had stopped and Philip had risen to reply.
+
+He had scarcely begun speaking when the doors were suddenly thrown open
+again, and a woman came forward quickly.  The instant she entered Philip
+saw her, and stopped speaking.  Every one turned.
+
+It was Guida.  In the silence, looking neither to right nor left, she
+advanced almost to where the Greffier sat, and dropping on her knee and
+looking up to the Bailly and the jurats, stretched out her hands and
+cried:
+
+"Haro, haro!  A l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!"
+
+If one rose from the dead suddenly to command them to an awed obedience,
+Jerseymen could not be more at the mercy of the apparition than at the
+call of one who cries in their midst, "Haro! Haro!"--that ancient relic
+of the custom of Normandy and Rollo the Dane.  To this hour the Jerseyman
+maketh his cry unto Rollo, and the Royal Court--whose right to respond to
+this cry was confirmed by King John and afterwards by Charles--must
+listen, and every one must heed.  That cry of Haro makes the workman drop
+his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the
+fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his
+babble, to await the judgment of the Royal Court.
+
+Every jurat fixed his eye upon Guida as though she had come to claim his
+life.  The Bailly's lips opened twice as though to speak, but no words
+came.  The Governor sat with hands clinched upon his chairarm.  The crowd
+breathed in gasps of excitement.  The Comtesse Chantavoine looked at
+Philip, looked at Guida, and knew that here was the opening of the scroll
+she had not been able to unfold.  Now she should understand that
+something which had made the old Duc de Bercy with his last breath say,
+Don't be afraid!
+
+Philip stood moveless, his eyes steady, his face bitter, determined.  Yet
+there was in his look, fixed upon Guida, some strange mingling of pity
+and purpose.  It was as though two spirits were fighting in his face for
+mastery.  The Countess touched him upon the arm, but he took no notice.
+Drawing back in her seat she looked at him and at Guida, as one might
+watch the balances of justice weighing life and death.  She could not
+read this story, but one glance at the faces of the crowd round her made
+her aware that here was a tale of the past which all knew in little or in
+much.
+
+"Haro!  haro!  A l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!"  What did she
+mean, this woman with the exquisite face, alive with power and feeling,
+indignation and appeal?  To what prince did she cry?--for what aid?
+who trespassed upon her?
+
+The Bailly now stood up, a frown upon his face.  He knew what scandal had
+said concerning Guida and Philip.  He had never liked Guida, for in the
+first days of his importance she had, for a rudeness upon his part meant
+as a compliment, thrown his hat--the Lieutenant-Bailly's hat--into the
+Fauxbie by the Vier Prison.  He thought her intrusive thus to stay these
+august proceedings of the Royal Court, by an appeal for he knew not what.
+
+"What is the trespass, and who the trespasser?" asked the Bailly
+sternly.
+
+Guida rose to her feet.
+
+"Philip d'Avranche has trespassed," she said.  "What Philip d'Avranche,
+mademoiselle?" asked the Bailly in a rough, ungenerous tone.
+
+"Admiral Philip d'Avranche, known as his Serene Highness the Duc de
+Bercy, has trespassed on me," she answered.
+
+She did not look at Philip, her eyes were fixed upon the Bailly and the
+jurats.
+
+The Bailly whispered to one or two jurats.  "Wherein is the trespass?"
+asked the Bailly sharply.  "Tell your story."
+
+After an instant's painful pause, Guida told her tale.
+
+"Last night at Plemont," she said in a voice trembling a little at first
+but growing stronger as she went on, "I left my child, my Guilbert, in
+his bed, with Dormy Jamais to watch beside him, while I went to my boat
+which lies far from my hut.  I left Dormy Jamais with the child because I
+was afraid--because I had been afraid, these three days past, that Philip
+d'Avranche would steal him from me.  I was gone but half an hour; it was
+dark when I returned.  I found the door open, I found Dormy Jamais lying
+unconscious on the floor, and my child's bed empty.  My child was gone.
+He was stolen from me by Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy."
+
+"What proof have you that it was the Duc de Bercy?" asked the Bailly.
+
+"I have told your honour that Dormy Jamais was there.  He struck Dormy
+Jamais to the ground, and rode off with my child."
+
+The Bailly sniffed.
+
+"Dormy Jamais is a simpleton--an idiot."
+
+"Then let the Prince speak," she answered quickly.  She turned and looked
+Philip in the eyes.  He did not answer a word.  He had not moved since
+she entered the court-room.  He kept his eyes fixed on her, save for one
+or two swift glances towards the jurats.  The crisis of his life had
+come.  He was ready to meet it now: anything would be better than all he
+had gone through during the past ten days.  In mad impulse he had stolen
+the child, with the wild belief that through it he could reach Guida,
+could bring her to him.  For now this woman who despised him, hated him,
+he desired more than all else in the world.  Ambition has her own means
+of punishing.  For her gifts of place or fortune she puts some impossible
+hunger in the soul of the victim which leads him at last to his own
+destruction.  With all the world conquered there is still some mystic
+island of which she whispers, and to gain this her votary risks all--and
+loses all.
+
+The Bailly saw by Philip's face that Guida had spoken truth.  But he
+whispered with the jurats eagerly, and presently he said with brusque
+decision:
+
+"Our law of Haro may only apply to trespass upon property.  Its intent is
+merely civil."
+
+Which having said he opened and shut his mouth with gusto, and sat back
+as though expecting Guida to retire.
+
+"Your law of Haro, monsieur le Bailly!" Guida answered with flashing
+eyes, her voice ringing out fearlessly.  "Your law of Haro!  The law of
+Haro comes from the custom of Normandy, which is the law of Jersey.  You
+make its intent this, you make it that, but nothing can alter the law,
+and what has been done in its name for generations.  Is it so, that if
+Philip d'Avranche trespass on my land, or my hearth, I may cry Haro,
+haro!  and you will take heed?  But when it is blood of my blood, bone of
+my bone, flesh of my flesh that he has wickedly seized; when it is the
+head I have pillowed on my breast for four years--the child that has
+known no father, his mother's only companion in her unearned shame, the
+shame of an outcast--then is it so that your law of Haro may not apply?
+Messieurs, it is the justice of Haro that I ask, not your lax usage of
+it.  From this Prince Philip I appeal to the spirit of Prince Rollo who
+made this law.  I appeal to the law of Jersey which is the Custom of
+Normandy.  There are precedents enough, as you well know, messieurs.  I
+demand--I demand--my child."
+
+The Bailly and the jurats were in a hopeless quandary.  They glanced
+furtively at Philip.  They were half afraid that she was right, and yet
+were timorous of deciding against the Prince.
+
+She saw their hesitation.  "I call on you to fulfil the law.  I have
+cried Haro, haro!  and what I have cried men will hear outside this
+Court, outside this Isle of Jersey; for I appeal against a sovereign
+duke of Europe."
+
+The Bailly and the jurats were overwhelmed by the situation.  Guida's
+brain was a hundred times clearer than theirs.  Danger, peril to her
+child, had aroused in her every force of intelligence; she had the
+daring, the desperation of the lioness fighting for her own.
+
+Philip himself solved the problem.  Turning to the bench of jurats, he
+said quietly:
+
+"She is quite right; the law of Haro is with her.  It must apply."
+
+The Court was in a greater maze than ever.  Was he then about to restore
+to Guida her child?  After an instant's pause Philip continued:
+
+"But in this case there was no trespass, for the child--is my own."
+
+Every eye in the Cohue Royale fixed itself upon him, then upon Guida,
+then upon her who was known as the Duchesse de Bercy.  The face of the
+Comtesse Chantavoine was like snow, white and cold.  As the words were
+spoken a sigh broke from her, and there came to Philip's mind that
+distant day in the council chamber at Bercy when for one moment he was
+upon his trial; but he did not turn and look at her now.  It was all
+pitiable, horrible; but this open avowal, insult as it was to the
+Comtesse Chantavoine, could be no worse than the rumours which would
+surely have reached her one day.  So let the game fare on.  He had thrown
+down the glove now, and he could not see the end; he was playing for one
+thing only--for the woman he had lost, for his own child.  If everything
+went by the board, why, it must go by the board.  It all flashed through
+his brain: to-morrow he must send in his resignation to the Admiralty--
+so much at once.  Then Bercy--come what might, there was work for him to
+do at Bercy.  He was a sovereign duke of Europe, as Guida had said.  He
+would fight for the duchy for his son's sake.  Standing there he could
+feel again the warm cheek of the child upon his own, as last night he
+felt it riding across the island from Plemont to the village near Mont
+Orgueil.  That very morning he had hurried down to a little cottage in
+the village and seen it lying asleep, well cared for by a peasant woman.
+He knew that to-morrow the scandal of the thing would belong to the
+world, but he was not dismayed.  He had tossed his fame as an admiral
+into the gutter, but Bercy still was left.  All the native force, the
+stubborn vigour, the obdurate spirit of the soil of Jersey of which he
+was, its arrogant self-will, drove him straight into this last issue.
+What he had got at so much cost he would keep against all the world.
+He would--
+
+But he stopped short in his thoughts, for there now at the court-room
+door stood Detricand, the Chouan chieftain.
+
+He drew his hand quickly across his eyes.  It seemed so wild, so
+fantastic, that of all men, Detricand should be there.  His gaze was so
+fixed that every one turned to see--every one save Guida.
+
+Guida was not conscious of this new figure in the scene.  In her heart
+was fierce tumult.  Her hour had come at last, the hour in which she must
+declare that she was the wife of this man.  She had no proofs.  No doubt
+he would deny it now, for he knew how she loathed him.  But she must tell
+her tale.
+
+She was about to address the Bailly, but, as though a pang of pity shot,
+through her heart, she turned instead and looked at the Comtesse
+Chantavoine.  She could find it in her to pause in compassion for this
+poor lady, more wronged than herself had been.  Their eyes met.  One
+instant's flash of intelligence between the souls of two women, and Guida
+knew that the look of the Comtesse Chantavoine had said: "Speak for your
+child."
+
+Thereupon she spoke.
+
+"Messieurs, Prince Philip d'Avranche is my husband."
+
+Every one in the court-room stirred with excitement.  Some weak-nerved
+woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined
+its feeble wail to hers.
+
+"Five years ago," Guida continued, "I was married to Philip d'Avranche by
+the Reverend Lorenzo Dow in the church of St. Michael's--"
+
+The Bailly interrupted with a grunt.  "H'm--Lorenzo Dow is well out of
+the way-have done."
+
+"May I not then be heard in my own defence?" Guida cried in indignation.
+"For years I have suffered silently slander and shame.  Now I speak for
+myself at last, and you will not hear me!  I come to this court of
+justice, and my word is doubted ere I can prove the truth.  Is it for
+judges to assail one so?  Five years ago I was married secretly, in St.
+Michael's Church--secretly, because Philip d'Avranche urged it, pleaded
+for it.  An open marriage, he said, would hinder his promotion.  We were
+wedded, and he left me.  War broke out.  I remained silent according to
+my promise to him.  Then came the time when in the States of Bercy he
+denied that he had a wife.  From the hour I knew he had done so I denied
+him.  My child was born in shame and sorrow, I myself was outcast in this
+island.  But my conscience was clear before Heaven.  I took myself and my
+child out from among you and went to Plemont.  I waited, believing that
+God's justice was surer than man's.  At last Philip d'Avranche--my
+husband--returned here.  He invaded my home, and begged me to come with
+my child to him as his wife--he who had so evilly wronged me, and wronged
+another more than me.  I refused.  Then he stole my child from me.  You
+ask for proofs of my marriage.  Messieurs, I have no proofs.
+
+"I know not where Lorenzo Dow may be found.  The register of St. Michael's
+Church, as you all know, was stolen.  Mr. Shoreham, who witnessed the
+marriage, is dead.  But you must believe me.  There is one witness left,
+if he will but speak--even the man who married me, the man that for one
+day called me his wife.  I ask him now to tell the truth."
+
+She turned towards Philip, her clear eyes piercing him through and
+through.
+
+What was going on in his mind neither she nor any in that Court might
+ever know, for in the pause, the Comtesse Chantavoine rose up, and
+passing steadily by Philip, came to Guida.  Looking her in the eyes with
+an incredible sorrow, she took her hand, and turned towards Philip with
+infinite scorn.
+
+A strange, thrilling silence fell upon all the Court.  The jurats shifted
+in their seats with excitement.  The Bailly, in a hoarse, dry voice,
+said:
+
+"We must have proof.  There must be record as well as witness."
+
+From near the great doorway came a voice saying: "The record is here,"
+and Detricand stepped forward, in his uniform of the army of the Vendee.
+
+A hushed murmur ran round the room.  The jurats whispered to each other.
+
+"Who are you, monsieur?" said the Bailly.
+
+"I am Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine," he replied, "for whom the
+Comtesse Chantavoine will vouch," he added in a pained voice, and bowed
+low to her and to Guida.  "I am but this hour landed.  I came to Jersey
+on this very matter."
+
+He did not wait for the Bailly to reply, but began to tell of the death
+of Lorenzo Dow, and, taking from his pocket the little black journal,
+opened it and read aloud the record written therein by the dead
+clergyman.  Having read it, he passed it on to the Greffier, who handed
+it up to the Bailly.  Another moment's pause ensued.  To the most
+ignorant and casual of the onlookers the strain was great; to those
+chiefly concerned it was supreme.  The Bailly and the jurats whispered
+together.  Now at last a spirit of justice was roused in them.  But the
+law's technicalities were still to rule.
+
+The Bailly closed the book, and handed it back to the Greffier with the
+words: "This is not proof though it is evidence."
+
+Guida felt her heart sink within her.  The Comtesse Chantavoine, who
+still held her hand, pressed it, though herself cold as ice with sickness
+of spirit.
+
+At that instant, and from Heaven knows where--as a bird comes from a
+bush--a little grey man came quickly among them all, carrying spread open
+before him a book almost as big as himself.  Handing it up to the Bailly,
+he said:
+
+"Here is the proof, Monsieur le Bailly--here is the whole proof."
+
+The Bailly leaned over and drew up the book.  The jurats crowded near and
+a dozen heads gathered about the open volume.
+
+At last the Bailly looked up and addressed the Court solemnly.
+
+"It is the lost register of St. Michael's," he said.  "It contains the
+record of the marriage of Lieutenant Philip d'Avranche and Guida
+Landresse de Landresse, both of the Isle of Jersey, by special license of
+the Bishop of Winchester."
+
+"Precisely so, precisely so," said the little grey figure--the Chevalier
+Orvillier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir.  Tears ran down his cheeks as he
+turned towards Guida, but he was smiling too.
+
+Guida's eyes were upon the Bailly.  "And the child?" she cried with a
+broken voice--"the child?"
+
+"The child goes with its mother," answered the Bailly firmly.
+
+
+
+
+DURING ONE YEAR LATER
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+The day that saw Guida's restitution in the Cohue Royale brought but
+further trouble to Ranulph Delagarde.  The Chevalier had shown him the
+lost register of St. Michael's, and with a heart less heavy, he left the
+island once more.  Intending to join Detricand in the Vendee, he had
+scarcely landed at St. Malo when he was seized by a press-gang and
+carried aboard a French frigate commissioned to ravage the coasts of
+British America.  He had stubbornly resisted the press, but had been
+knocked on the head, and there was an end on it.
+
+In vain he protested that he was an Englishman.  They laughed at him.
+His French was perfect, his accent Norman, his was a Norman face--
+evidence enough.  If he was not a citizen of France he should be, and he
+must be.  Ranulph decided that it was needless to throw away his life.
+It was better to make a show of submission.  So long as he had not to
+fight British ships, he could afford to wait.  Time enough then for him
+to take action.  When the chance came he would escape this bondage;
+meanwhile remembering his four years' service with the artillery at
+Elizabeth Castle, he asked to be made a gunner, and his request was
+granted.
+
+The Victoire sailed the seas battle-hungry, and presently appeased her
+appetite among Dutch and Danish privateers.  Such excellent work did
+Ranulph against the Dutchmen, that Richambeau, the captain, gave him a
+gun for himself, and after they had fought the Danes made him a master-
+gunner.  Of the largest gun on the Victoire Ranulph grew so fond that at
+last he called her ma couzaine.
+
+Days and weeks passed, until one morning came the cry of "Land!  Land!"
+and once again Ranulph saw British soil--the tall cliffs of the peninsula
+of Gaspe.  Gaspe--that was the ultima Thule to which Mattingley and
+Carterette had gone.
+
+Presently, as the Victoire came nearer to the coast, he could see a bay
+and a great rock in the distance, and, as they bore in now, the rock
+seemed to stretch out like a vast wall into the gulf.  As he stood
+watching and leaning on ma couzaine, a sailor near him said that the bay
+and the rock were called Perce.
+
+Perce Bay--that was the exact point for which Elie Mattingley and
+Carterette had sailed with Sebastian Alixandre.  How strange it was!  He
+had bidden Carterette good-bye for ever, yet fate had now brought him to
+the very spot whither she had gone.
+
+The Rock of Perce was a wall, three hundred feet high, and the wall was
+an island that had once been a long promontory like a battlement, jutting
+out hundreds of yards into the gulf.  At one point it was pierced by an
+archway.  It was almost sheer; its top was flat and level.  Upon the
+sides there was no verdure; upon the top centuries had made a green
+field.  The wild geese as they flew northward, myriad flocks of gulls,
+gannets, cormorants, and all manner of fowl of the sea, had builded upon
+the summit until it was rich with grass and shrubs.  The nations of the
+air sent their legions here to bivouac, and the discord of a hundred
+languages might be heard far out to sea, far in upon the land.  Millions
+of the races of the air swarmed there; at times the air above was
+darkened by clouds of them.  No fog-bell on a rock-bound coast might warn
+mariners more ominously than these battalions of adventurers on the Perce
+Rock.
+
+No human being had ever mounted to this eyrie.  Generations of fishermen
+had looked upon the yellowish-red limestone of the Perce Rock with a
+valorous eye, but it would seem that not even the tiny clinging hoof of a
+chamois or wild goat might find a foothold upon the straight sides of it.
+
+Ranulph was roused out of the spell Perce cast over him by seeing the
+British flag upon a building by the shore of the bay they were now
+entering.  His heart gave a great bound.  Yes, it was the English flag
+defiantly flying.  And more--there were two old 12 pounders being trained
+on the French squadron.  For the first time in years a low laugh burst
+from his lips.
+
+"O mai grand doux," he said in the Jersey patois, "only one man in the
+world would do that.  Only Elie Mattingley!"
+
+At that moment, Mattingley now issued from a wooden fishing-shed with
+Sebastian Alixandre and three others armed with muskets, and passed to
+the little fort on which flew the British and Jersey flags.  Ranulph
+heard a guffaw behind.  Richambeau, the captain, confronted him.
+
+"That's a big splutter in a little pot, gunner," said he.  He put his
+telescope to his eye.  "The Lord protect us," he cried, "they're going to
+fight my ship!"  He laughed again till the tears came.  "Son of Peter,
+but it is droll that--a farce au diable!  They have humour, these fisher-
+folk, eh, gunner?"
+
+"Mattingley will fight you just the same," answered Ranulph coolly.
+
+"Oh ho, you know these people, my gunner?" asked Richambeau.
+
+"All my life," answered Ranulph, "and, by your leave, I will tell you
+how."
+
+Not waiting for permission, after the manner of his country, he told
+Richambeau of his Jersey birth and bringing up, and how he was the victim
+of the pressgang.
+
+"Very good," said Richambeau.  "You Jersey folk were once Frenchmen, and
+now that you're French again, you shall do something for the flag.  You
+see that 12-pounder yonder to the right?  Very well, dismount it.  Then
+we'll send in a flag of truce, and parley with this Mattingley, for his
+jests are worth attention and politeness.  There's a fellow at the gun--
+no, he has gone.  Dismount the right-hand gun at one shot.  Ready now.
+Get a good range."
+
+The whole matter went through Ranulph's mind as the captain spoke.  If he
+refused to fire, he would be strung up to the yardarm; if he fired and
+missed, perhaps other gunners would fire, and once started they might
+raze the fishing-post.  If he dismounted the gun, the matter would
+probably remain only a jest, for such as yet Richambeau regarded it.
+
+Ranulph ordered the tackle and breechings cast away, had off the apron,
+pricked a cartridge, primed, bruised the priming, and covered the vent.
+Then he took his range steadily, quietly.  There was a brisk wind blowing
+from the south--he must allow for that; but the wind was stopped somewhat
+in its course by the Perch Rock--he must allow for that.
+
+All was ready.  Suddenly a girl came running round the corner of the
+building.
+
+It was Carterette.  She was making for the right-hand gun.  Ranulph
+started, the hand that held the match trembled.
+
+"Fire, you fool, or you'll kill the girl!" cried Richambeau.
+
+Ranulph laid a hand on himself as it were.  Every nerve in his body
+tingled, his legs trembled, but his eye was steady.  He took the sight
+once more coolly, then blew on the match.  Now the girl was within thirty
+feet of the gun.
+
+He quickly blew on the match again, and fired.  When the smoke cleared
+away he saw that the gun was dismounted, and not ten feet from it stood
+Carterette looking at it dazedly.
+
+He heard a laugh behind him.  There was Richambeau walking away,
+telescope under arm, even as the other 12-pounder on shore replied
+impudently to the gun he had fired.
+
+"A good aim," he heard Richambeau say, jerking a finger backward towards
+him.
+
+Was it then?  said Ranulph to himself; was it indeed?  Ba su, it was the
+last shot he would ever fire against aught English, here or elsewhere.
+
+Presently he saw a boat drawing away with the flag of truce in the hands
+of a sous-lieutenant.  His mind was made up; he would escape to-night.
+His place was there beside his fellow-countrymen.  He motioned away the
+men of the gun.  He would load ma couzaine himself for the last time.
+
+As he sponged the gun he made his plans.  Swish-swash the sponge-staff
+ran in and out--he would try to steal away at dog-watch.  He struck the
+sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it--he would have to
+slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore.  He
+reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of the gun,
+and as the seam was laid downwards he said to himself that he could swim
+under water, if discovered as he left the Victoire.  As he unstopped the
+touch-hole and tried with the priming-wire whether the cartridge was
+home, he was stunned by a fresh thought.
+
+Richambeau would send a squad of men to search for him, and if he was not
+found they would probably raze the Post, or take its people prisoners.
+As he put the apron carefully on ma couzaine, he determined that he could
+not take refuge with the Mattingleys.  Neither would it do to make for
+the woods of the interior, for still Richambeau might revenge himself on
+the fishing-post.  What was to be done?  He turned his eyes helplessly on
+Perce Rock.
+
+As he looked, a new idea came to him.  If only he could get to the top of
+that massive wall, not a hundred fleets could dislodge him.  One musket
+could defeat the forlorn hope of any army.  Besides, if he took refuge on
+the rock, there could be no grudge against Perce village or the
+Mattingleys, and Richambeau would not injure them.
+
+He eyed the wall closely.  The blazing sunshine showed it up in a hard
+light, and he studied every square yard of it with a telescope.  At one
+point the wall was not quite perpendicular.  There were also narrow
+ledges, lumps of stone, natural steps and little pinnacles which the
+fingers could grip and where man might rest.  Yes, he would try it.
+
+It was the last quarter of the moon, and the neaptide was running low
+when he let himself softly down into the water from the Victoire.  The
+blanket tied on his head held food kept from his rations, with stone and
+flint and other things.  He was not seen, and he dropped away quietly
+astern, getting clear of the Victoire while the moon was partially
+obscured.
+
+Now it was a question when his desertion would be discovered.  All he
+asked was two clear hours.  By that time the deed would be done, if he
+could climb Perce Rock at all.
+
+He touched bottom.  He was on Perce sands.  The blanket on his head was
+scarcely wetted.  He wrung the water out of his clothes, and ran softly
+up the shore.  Suddenly he was met by a cry of Qui va la!  and he stopped
+short at the point of Elie Mattingley's bayonet.  "Hush!" said Ranulph,
+and gave his name.
+
+Mattingley nearly dropped his musket in surprise.  He soon knew the tale
+of Ranulph's misfortunes, but he had not yet been told of his present
+plans when there came a quick footstep, and Carterette was at her
+father's side.  Unlike Mattingley, she did drop her musket at the sight
+of Ranulph.  Her lips opened, but at first she could not speak--this was
+more than she had ever dared hope for, since those dark days
+in Jersey.  Ranulph here!  She pressed her hands to her heart to stop its
+throbbing.
+
+Presently she was trembling with excitement at the story of how Ranulph
+had been pressed at St. Malo, and, all that came after until this very
+day.
+
+"Go along with Carterette," said Mattingley.  "Alixandre is at the house;
+he'll help you away into the woods."
+
+As Ranulph hurried away with Carterette, he told her his design.
+Suddenly she stopped short, "Ranulph Delagarde," she said vehemently,
+"you can't climb Perch Rock.  No one has ever done it, and you must not
+try.  Oh, I know you are a great man, but you mustn't think you can do
+this.  You will be safe where we shall hide you.  You shall not climb the
+rock-ah no, ba su!"
+
+He pointed towards the Post.  "They wouldn't leave a stick standing there
+if you hid me.  No, I'm going to the top of the rock."
+
+"Man doux terrible!" she said in sheer bewilderment, and then was
+suddenly inspired.  At last her time had come.
+
+"Pardingue," she said, clutching his arm, "if you go to the top of Perch
+Rock, so will I!"
+
+In spite of his anxiety he almost laughed.
+
+"But see--but see," he said, and his voice dropped; "you couldn't stay up
+there with me all alone, garcon Carterette.  And Richambeau would be
+firing on you too!"
+
+She was very angry, but she made no reply, and he continued quickly:
+
+"I'll go straight to the rock now.  When they miss me there'll be a pot
+boiling, you may believe.  If I get up," he added, "I'll let a string
+down for a rope you must get for me.  Once on top they can't hurt me....
+Eh ben, A bi'tot, gargon Carterette!"
+
+"O my good!  O my good!" said the girl with a sudden change of mood.
+"To think you have come like this, and perhaps--" But she dashed the
+tears from her eyes, and bade him go on.
+
+The tide was well out, the moon shining brightly.  Ranulph reached the
+point where, if the rock was to be scaled at all, the ascent must be
+made.  For a distance there was shelving where foothold might be had by a
+fearless man with a steady head and sure balance.  After that came about
+a hundred feet where he would have to draw himself up by juttings and
+crevices hand over hand, where was no natural pathway.  Woe be to him if
+head grew dizzy, foot slipped, or strength gave out; he would be broken
+to pieces on the hard sand below.  That second stage once passed, the
+ascent thence to the top would be easier; for though nearly as steep, it
+had more ledges, and offered fair vantage to a man with a foot like a
+mountain goat.  Ranulph had been aloft all weathers in his time, and his
+toes were as strong as another man's foot, and surer.
+
+He started.  The toes caught in crevices, held on to ledges, glued
+themselves on to smooth surfaces; the knees clung like a rough-rider's to
+a saddle; the big hands, when once they got a purchase, fastened like an
+air-cup.
+
+Slowly, slowly up, foot by foot, yard by yard, until one-third of the
+distance was climbed.  The suspense and strain were immeasurable.  But he
+struggled on and on, and at last reached a sort of flying pinnacle of
+rock, like a hook for the shields of the gods.
+
+Here he ventured to look below, expecting to see Carterette, but there
+was only the white sand, and no sound save the long wash of the gulf.  He
+drew a horn of arrack from his pocket and drank.  He had two hundred feet
+more to climb, and the next hundred would be the great ordeal.
+
+He started again.  This was travail indeed.  His rough fingers, his toes,
+hard as horn almost, began bleeding.  Once or twice he swung quite clear
+of the wall, hanging by his fingers to catch a surer foothold to right or
+left, and just getting it sometimes by an inch or less.  The tension was
+terrible.  His head seemed to swell and fill with blood: on the top it
+throbbed till it was ready to burst.  His neck was aching horribly with
+constant looking up, the skin of his knees was gone, his ankles bruised.
+But he must keep on till he got to the top, or until he fell.
+
+He was fighting on now in a kind of dream, quite apart from all usual
+feelings of this world.  The earth itself seemed far away, and he was
+toiling among vastnesses, himself a giant with colossal frame and huge,
+sprawling limbs.  It was like a gruesome vision of the night, when the
+body is an elusive, stupendous mass that falls into space after a
+confused struggle with immensities.  It was all mechanical, vague, almost
+numb, this effort to overcome a mountain.  Yet it was precise and hugely
+expert too; for though there was a strange mist on the brain, the body
+felt its way with a singular certainty, as might some molluscan dweller
+of the sea, sensitive like a plant, intuitive like an animal.  Yet at
+times it seemed that this vast body overcoming the mountain must let go
+its hold and slide away into the darkness of the depths.
+
+Now there was a strange convulsive shiver in every nerve--God have mercy,
+the time was come!  .  .  .  No, not yet.  At the very instant when it
+seemed the panting flesh and blood would be shaken off by the granite
+force repelling it, the fingers, like long antennae, touched horns of
+rock jutting out from ledges on the third escarpment of the wall.  Here
+was the last point of the worst stage of the journey.  Slowly, heavily,
+the body drew up to the shelf of limestone, and crouched in an inert
+bundle.  There it lay for a long time.
+
+While the long minutes went by, a voice kept calling up from below;
+calling, calling, at first eagerly, then anxiously, then with terror.
+By and by the bundle of life stirred, took shape, raised itself, and was
+changed into a man again, a thinking, conscious being, who now understood
+the meaning of this sound coming up from the earth below--or was it the
+sea?  A human voice had at last pierced the awful exhaustion of the
+deadly labour, the peril and strife, which had numbed the brain while the
+body, in its instinct for existence, still clung to the rocky ledges.  It
+had called the man back to earth--he was no longer a great animal, and
+the rock a monster with skin and scales of stone.
+
+"Ranulph!  Maitre Ranulph!  Ah, Ranulph!" called the voice.
+
+Now he knew, and he answered down: "All right, all right, garche
+Carterette!"
+
+"Are you at the top?"
+
+"No, but the rest is easy."
+
+"Hurry, hurry, Ranulph.  If they should come before you reach the top!"
+
+"I'll soon be there."
+
+"Are you hurt, Ranulph?"
+
+"No, but my fingers are in rags.  I am going now.  A bi'tot, Carterette!"
+
+"Ranulph!"
+
+"'Sh, 'sh, do not speak.  I am starting."
+
+There was silence for what seemed hours to the girl below.  Foot by foot
+the man climbed on, no less cautious because the ascent was easier, for
+he was now weaker.  But he was on the monster's neck now, and soon he
+should set his heel on it: he was not to be shaken off.
+
+At last the victorious moment came.  Over a jutting ledge he drew himself
+up by sheer strength and the rubber-like grip of his lacerated fingers,
+and now he lay flat and breathless upon the ground.
+
+How soft and cool it was!  This was long sweet grass touching his face,
+making a couch like down for the battered, wearied body.  Surely such
+travail had been more than mortal.  And what was this vast fluttering
+over his head, this million-voiced discord round him, like the buffetings
+and cries of spirits welcoming another to their torment?  He raised his
+head and laughed in triumph.  These were the cormorants, gulls, and
+gannets on the Perch Rock.
+
+Legions of birds circled over him with cries so shrill that at first he
+did not hear Carterette's voice calling up to him.  At last, however,
+remembering, he leaned over the cliff and saw her standing in the
+moonlight far below.
+
+Her voice came up to him indistinctly because of the clatter of the
+birds.  "Maitre Ranulph!  Ranulph!"  She could not see him, for this part
+of the rock was in shadow.
+
+"Ah bah, all right!" he said, and taking hold of one end of the twine he
+had brought, he let the roll fall.  It dropped almost at Carterette's
+feet.  She tied to the end of it three loose ropes she had brought from
+the Post.  He drew them up quickly, tied them together firmly, and let
+the great coil down.  Ranulph's bundle, a tent and many things Carterette
+had brought were drawn up.
+
+"Ranulph!  Ranulph!" came Carterette's voice again.
+
+"Garcon Carterette!"
+
+"You must help Sebastian Alixandre up," she said.
+
+"Sebastian Alixandre--is he there?  Why does he want to come?"
+
+"That is no matter," she called softly.  "He is coming.  He has the rope
+round his waist.  Pull away!"  It was better, Ranulph thought to himself,
+that he should be on Perch Rock alone, but the terrible strain had
+bewildered him, and he could make no protest now.
+
+"Don't start yet," he called down; "I'll pull when all's ready."
+
+He fell back from the edge to a place in the grass where, tying the rope
+round his body, and seating himself, he could brace his feet against a
+ledge of rock.  Then he pulled on the rope.  It was round Carterette's
+waist!
+
+Carterette had told her falsehood without shame, for she was of those to
+whom the end is more than the means.  She began climbing, and Ranulph
+pulled steadily.  Twice he felt the rope suddenly jerk when she lost her
+footing, but it came in evenly still, and he used a nose of rock as a
+sort of winch.
+
+The climber was nearly two-thirds of the way up when a cannon-shot boomed
+out over the water, frightening again the vast covey of birds which
+shrieked and honked till the air was a maelstrom of cries.  Then came
+another cannon-shot.
+
+Ranulph's desertion was discovered.  The fight was begun between a single
+Jersey shipwright and a French war-ship.
+
+His strength, however, could not last much longer.  Every muscle of his
+body had been strained and tortured, and even this lighter task tried him
+beyond endurance.  His legs stiffened against the ledge of rock, the
+tension numbed his arms.  He wondered how near Alixandre was to the top.
+Suddenly there was a pause, then a heavy jerk.  Love of God--the rope
+was shooting through his fingers, his legs were giving way!  He gathered
+himself together, and then with teeth, hands, and body rigid with
+enormous effort, he pulled and pulled.  Now he could not see.  A mist
+swam before his eyes.  Everything grew black, but he pulled on and on.
+
+He never knew how the climber reached the top.  But when the mist cleared
+away from his eyes, Carterette was bending over him, putting rum to his
+lips.
+
+"Carterette-garcon Carterette!" he murmured, amazed.  Then as the truth
+burst upon him he shook his head in a troubled sort of way.
+
+"What a cat I was!" said Carterette.  "What a wild cat I was to make you
+haul me up!  It was bad for me with the rope round me, it must have been
+awful for you, my poor esmanus--poor scarecrow Ranulph."
+
+Scarecrow indeed he looked.  His clothes were nearly gone, his hair was
+tossed and matted, his eyes bloodshot, his big hands like pieces of raw
+meat, his feet covered with blood.
+
+"My poor scarecrow!" she repeated, and she tenderly wiped the blood from
+his face where his hands had touched it.  Meanwhile bugle-calls and cries
+of command came up to them, and in the first light of morning they could
+see French officers and sailors, Mattingley, Alixandre, and others,
+hurrying to and fro.
+
+When day came clear and bright, it was known that Carterette as well as
+Ranulph had vanished.  Mattingley shook his head stoically, but
+Richambeau on the Victoire was as keen to hunt down one Jersey-Englishman
+as he had ever been to attack an English fleet.  More so, perhaps.
+
+Meanwhile the birds kept up a wild turmoil and shrieking.  Never before
+had any one heard them so clamorous.  More than once Mattingley had
+looked at Perch Rock curiously, but whenever the thought of it as a
+refuge came to him, he put it away.  No, it was impossible.
+
+Yet, what was that?  Mattingley's heart thumped.  There were two people
+on the lofty island wall--a man and a woman.  He caught' the arm of a
+French officer near him.  "Look, look!" he said.  The officer raised his
+glass.
+
+"It's the gunner," he cried and handed the glass to the old man.
+
+"It's Carterette," said Mattingley in a hoarse voice.  "But it's not
+possible.  It's not possible," he added helplessly.  "Nobody was ever
+there.  My God, look at it--look at it!"
+
+It was a picture indeed.  A man and a woman were outlined against the
+clear air, putting up a tent as calmly as though on a lawn, thousands of
+birds wheeling over their heads, with querulous cries.
+
+A few moments later, Elie Mattingley was being rowed swiftly to the
+Victoire, where Richambeau was swearing viciously as he looked through
+his telescope.  He also had recognised the gunner.
+
+He was prepared to wipe out the fishing-post if Mattingley did not
+produce Ranulph--well, "here was Ranulph duly produced and insultingly
+setting up a tent on this sheer rock, with some snippet of the devil,"
+said Richambeau, and defying a great French war-ship.  He would set his
+gunners to work.  If he only had as good a marksman as Ranulph himself,
+the deserter should drop at the first shot "death and the devil take his
+impudent face!"
+
+He was just about to give the order when Mattingley was brought to him.
+The old man's story amazed him beyond measure.
+
+"It is no man, then!" said Richambeau, when Mattingley had done.  "He
+must be a damned fly to do it.  And the girl--sacre moi!  he drew her up
+after him.  I'll have him down out of that though, or throw up my flag,"
+he added, and turning fiercely, gave his orders.
+
+For hours the Victoire bombarded the lonely rock from the north.  The
+white tent was carried away, but the cannon-balls flew over or merely
+battered the solid rock, the shells were thrown beyond, and no harm was
+done.  But now and again the figure of Ranulph appeared, and a half-dozen
+times he took aim with his musket at the French soldiers on the shore.
+Twice his shots took effect; one man was wounded, and one killed.  Then
+whole companies of marines returned a musketry fire at him, to no
+purpose.  At his ease he hid himself in the long grass at the edge of the
+cliff, and picked off two more men.
+
+Here was a ridiculous thing: one man and a slip of a girl fighting and
+defying a battle-ship.  The smoke of battle covered miles of the great
+gulf.  Even the seabirds shrieked in ridicule.
+
+This went on for three days at intervals.  With a fine chagrin Richambeau
+and his men saw a bright camp-fire lighted on the rock, and knew that
+Ranulph and the girl were cooking their meals in peace.  A flag-staff too
+was set up, and a red cloth waved defiantly in the breeze.  At last
+Richambeau, who had watched the whole business from the deck of the
+Victoire, burst out laughing, and sent for Elie Mattingley.  "Come, I've
+had enough," said Richambeau.
+
+"There never was a wilder jest, and I'll not spoil the joke.  He has us
+on his toasting-fork.  He shall have the honour of a flag of truce."
+
+And so it was that the French battle-ship sent a flag of truce to the
+foot of Perch Rock, and a French officer, calling up, gave his captain's
+word of honour that Ranulph should suffer nothing at the hands of a
+court-martial, and that he should be treated as an English prisoner of
+war, not as a French deserter.
+
+There was no court-martial.  After Ranulph, at Richambeau's command, had
+told the tale of the ascent, the Frenchman said:
+
+"No one but an Englishman could be fool enough to try such a thing, and
+none but a fool could have had the luck to succeed.  But even a fool can
+get a woman to follow him, and so this flyaway followed you, and--"
+
+Carterette made for Richambeau as though to scratch his eyes out, but
+Ranulph held her back.  "--And you are condemned, gunner," continued
+Richambeau dryly, "to marry the said maid before sundown, or be carried
+out to sea a prisoner of war."  So saying, he laughed, and bade them
+begone to the wedding.
+
+Ranulph left Richambeau's ship bewildered and perturbed.  For hours he
+paced the shore, and at last his thoughts began to clear.  The new life
+he had led during the last few months had brought many revelations.  He
+had come to realise that there are several sorts of happiness, but that
+all may be divided into two kinds: the happiness of doing good to
+ourselves, and that of doing good to others.  It opened out clearly to
+him now as he thought of Carterette in the light of Richambeau's coarse
+jest.
+
+For years he had known in a sort of way that Carterette preferred him to
+any other man.  He knew now that she had remained single because of him.
+For him her impatience had been patience, her fiery heart had spilled
+itself in tenderness for his misfortunes.  She who had lightly tossed
+lovers aside, her coquetry appeased, had to himself shown sincerity
+without coquetry, loyalty without selfishness.  He knew well that she had
+been his champion in dark days, that he had received far more from her
+than he had ever given--even of friendship.  In his own absorbing love
+for Guida Landresse, during long years he had been unconsciously blind to
+a devotion which had lived on without hope, without repining, with
+untiring cheerfulness.
+
+In those three days spent on the top of the Perch Rock how blithe garcon
+Carterette had been!  Danger had seemed nothing to her.  She had the
+temper of a man in her real enjoyment of the desperate chances of life.
+He had never seen her so buoyant; her animal spirits had never leapt so
+high.  And yet, despite the boldness which had sent her to the top of
+Perch Rock with him, there had been in her whole demeanour a frank
+modesty free from self-consciousness.  She could think for herself, she
+was sure of herself, and she would go to the ends of the earth for him.
+Surely he had not earned such friendship, such affection.
+
+He recalled how, the night before, as he sat by their little camp-fire,
+she had come and touched him on the shoulder, and, looking down at him,
+said:
+
+"I feel as if I was beginning my life all over again, don't you, Maitre
+Ranulph?"
+
+Her black eyes had been fixed on his, and the fire in them was as bright
+and full of health and truth as the fire at his feet.
+
+And he had answered her: "I think I feel that too, garcon Carterette."
+
+To which she had replied: "It isn't hard to forget here--not so very
+hard, is it?"
+
+She did not mean Guida, nor what he had felt for Guida, but rather the
+misery of the past.  He had nodded his head in reply, but had not spoken;
+and she, with a quick: "A bi'tot," had taken her blanket and gone to that
+portion of the rock set apart for her own.  Then he had sat by the fire
+thinking through the long hours of night until the sun rose.  That day
+Richambeau had sent his flag of truce, and the end of their stay on Perch
+Rock was come.
+
+Yes, he would marry Carterette.  Yet he was not disloyal, even in memory.
+What had belonged to Guida belonged to her for ever, belonged to a past
+life with which henceforth he should have naught to do.  What had sprung
+up in his heart for Carterette belonged to the new life.  In this new
+land there was work to do--what might he not accomplish here?  He
+realised that within one life a man may still live several lives, each
+loyal and honest after its kind.  A fate stronger than himself had
+brought him here; and here he would stay with fate.  It had brought him
+to Carterette, and who could tell what good and contentment might not yet
+come to him, and how much to her!
+
+That evening he went to Carterette and asked her to be his wife.  She
+turned pale, and, looking up into his eyes with a kind of fear, she said
+brokenly:
+
+"It's not because you feel you must?  It's not because you know I love
+you, Ranulph--is it?  It's not for that alone?"
+
+"It is because I want you, garcon Carterette," he answered tenderly,
+"because life will be nothing without you."
+
+"I am so happy--par made, I am so happy!" she answered, and she hid her
+face on his breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, was no longer in the Vendee.  The whole
+of Brittany was in the hands of the victorious Hoche, the peasants were
+disbanded, and his work for a time at least was done.
+
+On the same day of that momentous scene in the Cohue Royale when Guida
+was vindicated, Detricand had carried to Granville the Comtesse
+Chantavoine, who presently was passed over to the loving care of her
+kinsman General Grandjon-Larisse.  This done, he proceeded to England.
+
+From London he communicated with Grandjon-Larisse, who applied himself
+to secure from the Directory leave for the Chouan chieftain to return to
+France, with amnesty for his past "rebellion."  This was got at last
+through the influence of young Bonaparte himself.  Detricand was free now
+to proceed against Philip.
+
+He straightway devoted himself to a thing conceived on the day that Guida
+was restored to her rightful status as a wife.  His purpose now was to
+wrest from Philip the duchy of Bercy.  Philip was heir by adoption only,
+and the inheritance had been secured at the last by help of a lie--surely
+his was a righteous cause!
+
+His motives had not their origin in hatred of Philip alone, nor in desire
+for honours and estates for himself, nor in racial antagonism, for had he
+not been allied with England in this war against the Government?  He
+hated Philip the man, but he hated still more Philip the usurper who had
+brought shame to the escutcheon of Bercy.  There was also at work another
+and deeper design to be shown in good time.  Philip had retired from the
+English navy, and gone back to his duchy of Bercy.  Here he threw himself
+into the struggle with the Austrians against the French.  Received with
+enthusiasm by the people, who as yet knew little or nothing of the doings
+in the Cohue Royale, he now took over command of the army and proved
+himself almost as able in the field as he had been at sea.  Of these
+things Detricand knew, and knew also that the lines were closing in round
+the duchy; that one day soon Bonaparte would send a force which should
+strangle the little army and its Austrian allies.  The game then would be
+another step nearer the end.  Free to move at will, he visited the Courts
+of Prussia, Russia, Spain, Italy, and Austria, and laid before them his
+claims to the duchy, urging an insistence on its neutrality, and a trial
+of his cause against Philip.  Ceaselessly, adroitly, with persistence and
+power, he toiled towards his end, the way made easier by tales told of
+his prowess in the Vendee.  He had offers without number to take service
+in foreign armies, but he was not to be tempted.  Gossip of the Courts
+said that there was some strange romance behind this tireless pursuit of
+an inheritance, but he paid no heed.  If at last there crept over Europe
+wonderful tales of Detricand's past life in Jersey, of the real Duchesse
+de Bercy, and of the new Prince of Vaufontaine, Detricand did not, or
+feigned not to, hear them; and the Comtesse Chantavoine had disappeared
+from public knowledge.  The few who guessed his romance were puzzled to
+understand his cause: for if he dispossessed Philip, Guida must also be
+dispossessed.  This, certainly, was not lover-like or friendly.
+
+But Detricand was not at all puzzled; his mind and purpose were clear.
+Guida should come to no injury through him--Guida who, as they left the
+Cohue Royale that day of days, had turned on him a look of heavenly trust
+and gratitude; who, in the midst of her own great happenings, found time
+to tell him by a word how well she knew he had kept his promise to her,
+even beyond belief.  Justice for her was now the supreme and immediate
+object of his life.  There were others ready also to care for France, to
+fight for her, to die for her, to struggle towards the hour when the King
+should come to his own; but there was only one man in the world who could
+achieve Guida's full justification, and that was himself, Detricand of
+Vaufontaine.
+
+He was glad to turn to the Chevalier's letters from Jersey.  It was from
+the Chevalier's lips he had learned the whole course of Guida's life
+during the four years of his absence from the island.  It was the
+Chevalier who drew for him pictures of Guida in her new home, none
+other than the house of Elie Mattingley, which the Royal Court having
+confiscated now handed over to her as an act of homage.  The little world
+of Jersey no longer pointed the finger of scorn at Guida Landresse de
+Landresse, but bent the knee to Princess Guida d'Avranche.
+
+Detricand wrote many letters to the Chevalier, and they with their
+cheerful and humorous allusions were read aloud to Guida--all save one
+concerning Philip.  Writing of himself to the Chevalier on one occasion,
+he laid bare with a merciless honesty his nature and his career.
+Concerning neither had he any illusions.
+
+     I do not mistake myself, Chevalier [he wrote], nor these late doings
+     of mine.  What credit shall I take to myself for coming to place and
+     some little fame?  Everything has been with me: the chance of
+     inheritance, the glory of a cause as hopeless as splendid, and more
+     splendid because hopeless; and the luck of him who loads the dice--
+     for all my old comrades, the better men, are dead, and I, the least
+     of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause.  What praise
+     shall I take for this?  None--from all decent fellows of the earth,
+     none at all.  It is merely laughable that I should be left, the
+     monument of a sacred loyalty greater than the world has ever known.
+
+     I have no claims--But let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier.  Here
+     was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to
+     nobody.  Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown
+     stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and
+     joins the standard of work and sacrifice.  What greater luxury shall
+     man ask?  If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment,
+     pray you what is?  The world loves contrasts.  The deep-dyed sinner
+     raising the standard of piety is picturesque.  If, charmed by his
+     own new virtues, he is constant in his enthusiasm, behold a St.
+     Augustine!  Everything is with the returned prodigal--the more so if
+     he be of the notorious Vaufontaines, who were ever saints turned
+     sinners, or sinners turned saints.
+
+     Tell me, my good friend, where is room for pride in me?  I am
+     getting far more out of life than I deserve; it is not well that you
+     and others should think better of me than I do of myself.  I do not
+     pretend that I dislike it, it is as balm to me.  But it would seem
+     that the world is monstrously unjust.  One day when I'm grown old--I
+     cannot imagine what else Fate has spared me for--I shall write the
+     Diary of a Sinner, the whole truth.  I shall tell how when my
+     peasant fighters were kneeling round me praying for success, even
+     thanking God for me, I was smiling in my glove--in scorn of myself,
+     not of them, Chevalier, no,--no, not of them!  The peasant's is the
+     true greatness.  Everything is with the aristocrat; he has to kick
+     the great chances from his path; but the peasant must go hunting
+     them in peril.  Hardly snatching sustenance from Fate, the peasant
+     fights into greatness; the aristocrat may only win to it by
+     rejecting Fate's luxuries.  The peasant never escapes the austere
+     teaching of hard experience, the aristocrat the languor of good
+     fortune.  There is the peasant and there am I.  Voila! enough of
+     Detricand of Vaufontaine.  .  .  .  The Princess Guida and the
+     child, are they--
+
+So the letter ran, and the Chevalier read it aloud to Guida up to the
+point where her name was writ.  Afterwards Guida would sit and think of
+what Detricand had said, and of the honesty of nature that never allowed
+him to deceive himself.  It pleased her also to think she had in some
+small way helped a man to the rehabilitation of his life.  He had said
+that she had helped him, and she believed him; he had proved the
+soundness of his aims and ambitions; his career was in the world's mouth.
+
+The one letter the Chevalier did not read to Guida referred to Philip.
+In it Detricand begged the Chevalier to hold himself in readiness to
+proceed at a day's notice to Paris.
+
+So it was that when, after months of waiting, the Chevalier suddenly
+left St. Heliers to join Detricand, Guida did not know the object of his
+journey.  All she knew was that he had leave from the Directory to visit
+Paris.  Imagining this to mean some good fortune for him, with a light
+heart she sent him off in charge of Jean Touzel, who took him to St. Malo
+in the Hardi Biaou, and saw him safely into the hands of an escort from
+Detricand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Three days later there was opened in one of the chambers of the Emperor's
+palace at Vienna a Congress of four nations--Prussia, Russia, Austria,
+and Sardinia.  Detricand's labours had achieved this result at last.
+Grandjon-Larisse, his old enemy in battle, now his personal friend and
+colleague in this business, had influenced Napoleon, and the Directory
+through him, to respect the neutrality of the duchy of Bercy, for which
+the four nations of this Congress declared.  Philip himself little knew
+whose hand had secured the neutrality until summoned to appear at the
+Congress, to defend his rights to the title and the duchy against those
+of Detricand Prince of Vaufontaine.  Had he known that Detricand was
+behind it all he would have fought on to the last gasp of power and died
+on the battle-field.  He realised now that such a fate was not for him--
+that he must fight, not on the field of battle like a prince, but in a
+Court of Nations like a doubtful claimant of sovereign honours.
+
+His whole story had become known in the duchy, and though it begot no
+feeling against him in war-time, now that Bercy was in a neutral zone of
+peace there was much talk of the wrongs of Guida and the Countess
+Chantavoine.  He became moody and saturnine, and saw few of his subjects
+save the old Governor-General and his whilom enemy, now his friend, Count
+Carignan Damour.  That at last he should choose to accompany him to
+Vienna the man who had been his foe during the lifetime of the old Duke,
+seemed incomprehensible.  Yet, to all appearance, Damour was now Philip's
+zealous adherent.  He came frankly repenting his old enmity, and though
+Philip did not quite believe him, some perverse temper, some obliquity of
+vision which overtakes the ablest minds at times, made him almost eagerly
+accept his new partisan.  One thing Philip knew: Damour had no love for
+Detricand, who indeed had lately sent him word that for his work in
+sending Fouche's men to attempt his capture in Bercy, he would have him
+shot, if the Court of Nations upheld his rights to the duchy.  Damour was
+able, even if Damour was not honest.  Damour, the able, the implacable
+and malignant, should accompany him to Vienna.
+
+The opening ceremony of the Congress was simple, but it was made notable
+by the presence of the Emperor of Austria, who addressed a few words of
+welcome to the envoys, to Philip, and, very pointedly, to the
+representative of the French Nation, the aged Duc de Mauban, who, while
+taking no active part in the Congress, was present by request of the
+Directory.  The Duke's long residence in Vienna and freedom from share in
+the civil war in France had been factors in the choice of him when the
+name was submitted to the Directory by General Grandjon-Larisse, upon
+whom in turn it had been urged by Detricand.
+
+The Duc de Mauban was the most marked figure of the Court, the Emperor
+not excepted.  Clean shaven, with snowy linen and lace, his own natural
+hair, silver white, tied in a queue behind, he had large eloquent
+wondering eyes that seemed always looking, looking beyond the thing he
+saw.  At first sight of him at his court, the Emperor had said: "The
+stars have frightened him."  No fanciful supposition, for the Duc de
+Mauban was as well known an astronomer as student of history and
+philanthropist.
+
+When the Emperor mentioned de Mauban's name Philip wondered where he had
+heard it before.  Something in the sound of it was associated with his
+past, he knew not how.  He had a curious feeling too that those
+deliberate, searching dark eyes saw the end of this fight, this battle of
+the strong.  The face fascinated him, though it awed him.  He admired it,
+even as he detested the ardent strength of Detricand's face, where the
+wrinkles of dissipation had given way to the bronzed carven look of the
+war-beaten soldier.
+
+It was fair battle between these two, and there was enough hatred in the
+heart of each to make the fight deadly.  He knew--and he had known since
+that day, years ago, in the Place du Vier Prison--that Detricand loved
+the girl whom he himself had married and dishonoured.  He felt also that
+Detricand was making this claim to the duchy more out of vengeance than
+from desire to secure the title for himself.  He read the whole deep
+scheme: how Detricand had laid his mine at every Court in Europe to bring
+him to this pass.
+
+For hours Philip's witnesses were examined, among them the officers of
+his duchy and Count Carignan Damour.  The physician of the old Duke of
+Bercy was examined, and the evidence was with Philip.  The testimony of
+Dalbarade, the French ex-Minister of Marine, was read and considered.
+Philip's story up to the point of the formal signature by the old Duke
+was straightforward and clear.  So far the Court was in his favour.
+
+Detricand, as natural heir of the duchy, combated each step in the
+proceedings from the stand-point of legality, of the Duke's fatuity
+concerning Philip, and his personal hatred of the House of Vaufontaine.
+On the third day, when the Congress would give its decision, Detricand
+brought the Chevalier to the palace.  At the opening of the sitting he
+requested that Damour be examined again.  The Count was asked what
+question had been put to Philip immediately before the deeds of
+inheritance were signed.  It was useless for Damour to evade the point,
+for there were other officers of the duchy present who could have told
+the truth.  Yet this truth, of itself, need not ruin Philip.  It was no
+phenomenon for a prince to have one wife unknown, and, coming to the
+throne, to take to himself another more exalted.
+
+Detricand was hoping that the nice legal sense of mine and thine should
+be suddenly weighted in his favour by a prepared tour de force.  The
+sympathies of the Congress were largely with himself, for he was of the
+order of the nobility, and Philip's descent must be traced through
+centuries of yeoman blood; yet there was the deliberate adoption by the
+Duke to face, with the formal assent of the States of Bercy, but little
+lessened in value by the fact that the French Government had sent its
+emissaries to Bercy to protest against it.  The Court had come to a point
+where decision upon the exact legal merits of the case was difficult.
+
+After Damour had testified to the question the Duke asked Philip when
+signing the deeds at Bercy, Detricand begged leave to introduce another
+witness, and brought in the Chevalier.  Now he made his great appeal.
+Simply, powerfully, he told the story of Philip's secret marriage with
+Guida, and of all that came after, up to the scene in the Cohue Royale
+when the marriage was proved and the child given back to Guida; when the
+Countess Chantavoine, turning from Philip, acknowledged to Guida the
+justice of her claim.  He drove home the truth with bare unvarnished
+power--the wrong to Guida, the wrong to the Countess, the wrong to the
+Dukedom of Bercy, to that honour which should belong to those in high
+estate.  Then at the last he told them who Guida was: no peasant girl,
+but the granddaughter of the Sieur Larchant de Mauprat of de Mauprats of
+Chambery: the granddaughter of an exile indeed, but of the noblest blood
+of France.
+
+The old Duc de Mauban fixed his look on him intently, and as the story
+proceeded his hand grasped the table before him in strong emotion.  When
+at last Detricand turned to the Chevalier and asked him to bear witness
+to the truth of what he had said, the Duke, in agitation, whispered to
+the President.
+
+All that Detricand had said moved the Court powerfully, but when the
+withered little flower of a man, the Chevalier, told in quaint brief
+sentences the story of the Sieur de Mauprat, his sufferings, his exile,
+and the nobility of his family, which had indeed, far back, come of royal
+stock, and then at last of Guida and the child, more than one member of
+the Court turned his head away with misty eyes.
+
+It remained for the Duc de Mauban to speak the word which hastened and
+compelled the end.  Rising in his place, he addressed to the Court a few
+words of apology, inasmuch as he was without real power there, and then
+he turned to the Chevalier.
+
+"Monsieur le chevalier," said he, "I had the honour to know you in
+somewhat better days for both of us.  You will allow me to greet you here
+with my profound respect.  The Sieur Larchant de Mauprat"--he turned to
+the President, his voice became louder--"the Sieur de Mauprat was my
+friend.  He was with me upon the day I married the Duchess Guidabaldine.
+Trouble, exile came to him.  Years passed, and at last in Jersey I saw
+him again.  It was the very day his grandchild was born.  The name given
+to her was Guidabaldine--the name of the Duchese de Mauban.  She was
+Guidabaldine Landresse de Landresse, she is my godchild.  There is no
+better blood in France than that of the de Mauprats of Chambery, and the
+grandchild of my friend, her father being also of good Norman blood, was
+worthy to be the wife of any prince in Europe.  I speak in the name of
+our order, I speak for Frenchmen, I speak for France.  If Detricand,
+Prince of Vaufontaine, be not secured in his right of succession to the
+dukedom of Bercy, France will not cease to protest till protest hath done
+its work.  From France the duchy of Bercy came.  It was the gift of a
+French king to a Frenchman, and she hath some claims upon the courtesy of
+the nations."
+
+For a moment after he took his seat there was absolute silence.  Then the
+President wrote upon a paper before him, and it was passed to each member
+of the Court sitting with him.  For a moment longer there was nothing
+heard save the scratching of a quill.  Philip recalled that day at Bercy
+when the Duke stooped and signed his name upon the deed of adoption and
+succession three times-three fateful times.
+
+At last the President, rising in his place, read the pronouncement of the
+Court: that Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, be declared true inheritor
+of the duchy of Bercy, the nations represented here confirming him in his
+title.
+
+The President having spoken, Philip rose, and, bowing to the Congress
+with dignity and composure, left the chamber with Count Carignan Damour.
+
+As he passed from the portico into the grounds of the palace, a figure
+came suddenly from behind a pillar and touched him on the arm.  He turned
+quickly, and received upon the face a blow from a glove.
+
+The owner of the glove was General Grandjon-Larisse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+"You understand, monsieur?" said Grandjon-Larisse.
+
+"Perfectly--and without the glove, monsieur le general," answered Philip
+quietly.  "Where shall my seconds wait upon you?"  As he spoke he turned
+with a slight gesture towards Damour.
+
+"In Paris, monsieur, if it please you."
+
+"I should have preferred it here, monsieur le general--but Paris, if it
+is your choice."
+
+"At 22, Rue de Mazarin, monsieur."  Then he made an elaborate bow to
+Philip.  "I bid you good-day, monsieur."
+
+"Monseigneur, not monsieur," Philip corrected.  "They may deprive me of my
+duchy, but I am still Prince Philip d'Avranche.  I may not be robbed of
+my adoption."
+
+There was something so steady, so infrangible in Philip's composure now,
+that Grandjon-Larisse, who had come to challenge a great adventurer, a
+marauder of honour, found his furious contempt checked by some integral
+power resisting disdain.  He intended to kill Philip--he was one of the
+most expert swordsmen in France--yet he was constrained to respect a
+composure not sangfroid and a firmness in misfortune not bravado.  Philip
+was still the man who had valiantly commanded men; who had held of the
+high places of the earth.  In whatever adventurous blood his purposes had
+been conceived, or his doubtful plans accomplished, he was still,
+stripped of power, a man to be reckoned with: resolute in his course once
+set upon, and impulsive towards good as towards evil.  He was never so
+much worth respect as when, a dispossessed sovereign with an empty title,
+discountenanced by his order, disbarred his profession, he held himself
+ready to take whatever penalty now came.
+
+In the presence of General Grandjon-Larisse, with whom was the might of
+righteous vengeance, he was the more distinguished figure.  To Philip now
+there came the cold quiet of the sinner, great enough to rise above
+physical fear, proud enough to say to the world: "Come, I pay the debt I
+owe.  We are quits.  You have no favours to give, and I none to take.
+You have no pardon to grant, and I none to ask."
+
+At parting Grandjon-Larisse bowed to Philip with great politeness, and
+said: "In Paris then, monsieur le prince."
+
+Philip bowed his head in assent.
+
+When they met again, it was at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne near
+the Maillot gate.
+
+It was a damp grey morning immediately before sunrise, and at first there
+was scarce light enough for the combatants to see each other perfectly,
+but both were eager and would not delay.
+
+As they came on guard the sun rose.  Philip, where he stood, was full in
+its light.  He took no heed, and they engaged at once.  After a few
+passes Grandjon-Larisse said: "You are in the light, monseigneur; the sun
+shines full upon you," and he pointed to the shade of a wall near by.
+"It is darker there."
+
+"One of us must certainly be in the dark-soon," answered Philip grimly,
+but he removed to the wall.  From the first Philip took the offensive.
+He was more active, and he was quicker and lighter of fence than his
+antagonist.  But Grandjon-Larisse had the surer eye, and was invincibly
+certain of hand and strong of wrist.  At length Philip wounded his
+opponent slightly in the left breast, and the seconds came forward to
+declare that honour was satisfied.  But neither would listen or heed;
+their purpose was fixed to fight to the death.  They engaged again, and
+almost at once the Frenchman was slightly wounded in the wrist.  Suddenly
+taking the offensive and lunging freely, Grandjon-Larisse drove Philip,
+now heated and less wary, backwards upon the wall.  At last, by a
+dexterous feint, he beat aside Philip's guard and drove the sword through
+his right breast at one fierce lunge.
+
+With a moan Philip swayed and fell forward into the arms of Damour, still
+grasping his weapon.  Grandjon-Larisse stooped to the injured man.
+Unloosing his fingers from the sword, Philip stretched up a hand to his
+enemy.
+
+"I am hurt to death," he said.  "Permit my compliments to the best
+swordsman I have ever known."  Then with a touch of sorry humour he
+added: "You cannot doubt their sincerity."
+
+Grandjon-Larisse was turning away when Philip called him back.  "Will you
+carry my profound regret to the Countess Chantavoine?" he whispered.
+"Say that it lies with her whether Heaven pardon me."
+
+Grandjon-Larisse hesitated an instant, then answered:
+
+"Those who are in heaven, monseigneur, know best what Heaven may do."
+
+Philip's pale face took on a look of agony.  "She is dead--she is dead!"
+he gasped.
+
+Grandjon-Larisse inclined his head, then after a moment, gravely said:
+
+"What did you think was left for a woman--for a Chantavoine?  It is not
+the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur."
+
+So saying, he bowed again to Philip and turned upon his heel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+Philip lay on a bed in the unostentatious lodging in the Rue de Vaugirard
+where Damour had brought him.  The surgeon had pronounced the wound
+mortal, giving him but a few hours to live.  For long after he was gone
+Philip was silent, but at length he said "You heard what Grandjon-Larisse
+said--It is broken pride that kills, Damour."  Then he asked for pen,
+ink, and paper.  They were brought to him.  He tried the pen upon the
+paper, but faintness suddenly seized him, and he fell back unconscious.
+
+When he came to himself he was alone in the room.  It was cold and
+cheerless--no fire on the hearth, no light save that flaring from a lamp
+in the street outside his window.  He rang the bell at his hand.  No one
+answered.  He called aloud: "Damour!  Damour!"
+
+Damour was far beyond earshot.  He had bethought him that now his place
+was in Bercy, where he might gather up what fragments of good fortune
+remained, what of Philip's valuables might be secured.  Ere he had fallen
+back insensible, Philip, in trying the pen, had written his own name on a
+piece of paper.  Above this Damour wrote for himself an order upon the
+chamberlain of Bercy to enter upon Philip's private apartments in the
+castle; and thither he was fleeing as Philip lay dying in the dark room
+of the house in the Rue de Vaugirard.
+
+The woman of the house, to whose care Philip was passed over by Damour,
+had tired of watching, and had gone to spend one of his gold pieces for
+supper with her friends.
+
+Meanwhile in the dark comfortless room, the light from without flickering
+upon his blanched face, Philip was alone with himself, with memory, and
+with death.  As he lay gasping, a voice seemed to ring through the silent
+room, repeating the same words again and again--and the voice was his own
+voice.  It was himself--some other outside self of him--saying, in
+tireless repetition: "May I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned
+and alone, if ever I deceive you.  I should deserve that if I deceived
+you, Guida!...."  "A black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone": it
+was like some horrible dirge chanting in his ear.
+
+Pictures flashed before his eyes, strange imaginings.  Now he was passing
+through dark corridors, and the stone floor beneath was cold--so cold!
+He was going to some gruesome death, and monks with voices like his own
+voice were intoning: "Abandoned and alone.  Alone--alone--abandoned and
+alone."  .  .  .  And now he was fighting, fighting on board the
+Araminta.  There was the roar of the great guns, the screaming of the
+carronade slides, the rattle of musketry, the groans of the dying, the
+shouts of his victorious sailors, the crash of the main-mast as it fell
+upon the bulwarks.  Then the swift sissing ripple of water, the thud of
+the Araminta as she struck, and the cold chill of the seas as she went
+down.  How cold was the sea--ah, how it chilled every nerve and tissue of
+his body!
+
+He roused to consciousness again.  Here was still the blank cheerless
+room, the empty house, the lamplight flaring through the window upon his
+stricken face, upon the dark walls, upon the white paper lying on the
+table beside him.
+
+Paper--that was it--he must write, he must write while he had strength.
+With the last courageous effort of life, his strenuous will forcing the
+declining powers into obedience for a final combat, he drew the paper
+near, and began to write.  The light flickered, wavered, he could just
+see the letters that he formed--no more.
+
+     Guida [he began], on the Ecrehos I said to you: "If I deceive you
+     may I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone!"  It
+     has all come true.  You were right, always right, and I was always
+     wrong.  I never started fair with myself or with the world.  I was
+     always in too great a hurry; I was too ambitious, Guida.  Ambition
+     has killed me, and it has killed her--the Comtesse.  She is gone.
+     What was it he said--if I could but remember what Grandjon-Larisse
+     said--ah yes, yes!--after he had given me my death-wound, he said:
+     "It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride."  There is
+     the truth.  She is in her grave, and I am going out into the dark.
+
+He lay back exhausted for a moment, in desperate estate.  The body was
+fighting hard that the spirit might confess itself before the vital spark
+died down for ever.  Seizing a glass of cordial near, he drank of it.
+The broken figure in its mortal defeat roused itself again, leaned over
+the paper, and a shaking hand traced on the brief piteous record of a
+life.
+
+     I climbed too fast.  Things dazzled me.  I thought too much of
+     myself--myself, myself was everything always; and myself has killed
+     me.  In wanton haste I came to be admiral and sovereign duke, and it
+     has all come to nothing--nothing.  I wronged you, I denied you,
+     there was the cause of all.  There is no one to watch with me now to
+     the one moment of life that counts.  In this hour the clock of time
+     fills all the space between earth and heaven.  It will strike soon--
+     the awful clock.  It will soon strike twelve: and then it will be
+     twelve of the clock for me always--always.
+
+     I know you never wanted revenge on me, Guida, but still you have it
+     here.  My life is no more now than vraic upon a rock.  I cling, I
+     cling, but that is all, and the waves break over me.  I am no longer
+     an admiral, I am no more a duke--I am nothing.  It is all done.  Of
+     no account with men I am going to my judgment with God.  But you
+     remain, and you are Princess Philip d'Avranche, and your son--your
+     son--will be Prince Guilbert d'Avranche.  But I can leave him
+     naught, neither estates nor power.  There is little honour in the
+     title now.  So it may be you will not use it.  But you will have a
+     new life: with my death happiness may begin again for you.  That
+     thought makes death easier.  I was never worthy of you, never.  I
+     understand myself now, and I know that you have read me all these
+     years, read me through and through.  The letter you wrote me, never
+     a day or night has passed but, one way or another, it has come home
+     to me.
+
+There was a footfall outside his window.  A roysterer went by in the
+light of the flaring lamp.  He was singing a ribald song.  A dog ran
+barking at his heels.  The reveller turned, drew his sword, and ran the
+dog through, then staggered on with his song.  Philip shuddered, and with
+a supreme effort bent to the table again, and wrote on.
+
+     You were right: you were my star, and I was so blind with
+     selfishness and vanity I could not see.  I am speaking the truth to
+     you now, Guida.  I believe I might have been a great man if I had
+     thought less of myself and more of others, more of you.  Greatness,
+     I was mad for that, and my madness has brought me to this desolate
+     end--alone.  Go tell Maitresse Aimable that she too was a good
+     prophet.  Tell her that, as she foresaw, I called your name in
+     death, and you did not come.  One thing before all: teach your boy
+     never to try to be great, but always to live well and to be just.
+     Teach him too that the world means better by him than he thinks, and
+     that he must never treat it as his foe; he must not try to force its
+     benefits and rewards.  He must not approach it like the highwayman.
+     Tell him never to flatter.  That is the worst fault in a gentleman,
+     for flattery makes false friends and the flatterer himself false.
+     Tell him that good address is for ease and courtesy of life, but it
+     must not be used to one's secret advantage  as I have used mine to
+     mortal undoing.  If ever Guilbert be in great temptation, tell him
+     his father's story, and read him these words to you, written, as you
+     see, with the cramped fingers of death.
+
+He could scarcely hold the pen now, and his eyes were growing dim.
+
+     .  .  .  I am come to the end of my strength.  I thought I loved
+     you, Guida, but I know now that it was not love--not real love.  Yet
+     it was all a twisted manhood had to give.  There are some things of
+     mine that you will keep for your son, if you forgive me dead whom
+     you despised living.  Detricand Duke of Bercy will deal honourably
+     by you.  All that is mine at the Castle of Bercy he will secure to
+     you.  Tell him I have written it so; though he will do it of
+     himself, I know.  He is a great man.  As I have gone downwards he
+     has come upwards.  There has been a star in his sky too.  I know it,
+     I know it, Guida, and he--he is not blind.  The light is going, I
+     cannot see.  I can only--
+
+He struggled fiercely for breath, but suddenly collapsed upon the table,
+and his head fell forward upon the paper; one cheek lying in the wet ink
+of his last written words, the other, cold and stark, turned to the
+window.  The light from the lamp without flickered on it in gruesome
+sportiveness.  The eyes stared and stared from the little dark room out
+into the world.  But they did not see.
+
+The night wore on.  At last came a knocking, knocking at the door-tap!
+tap!  tap!  But he did not hear.  A moment of silence, and again came a
+knocking--knocking--knocking .  .  .  !
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+The white and red flag of Jersey was flying half-mast from the Cohue
+Royale, and the bell of the parish church was tolling.  It was Saturday,
+but little business was being done in the Vier Marchi.  Chattering people
+were gathered at familiar points, and at the foot of La Pyramide a large
+group surrounded two sailor-men just come from Gaspe, bringing news of
+adventuring Jersiais--Elie Mattingley, Carterette and Ranulph Delagarde.
+This audience quickly grew, for word was being passed on from one little
+group to another.  So keen was interest in the story told by the home-
+coming sailors, that the great event which had brought them to the Vier
+Marchi was, for the moment, almost neglected.
+
+Presently, however, a cannon-shot, then another, and another, roused the
+people to remembrance.  The funeral cortege of Admiral Prince Philip
+d'Avranche was about to leave the Cohue Royale, and every eye was turned
+to the marines and sailors lining the road from the court-house to the
+church.
+
+The Isle of Jersey, ever stubbornly loyal to its own--even those whom the
+outside world contemned or cast aside--jealous of its dignity even with
+the dead, had come to bury Philip d'Avranche with all good ceremony.
+There had been abatements to his honour, but he had been a strong man and
+he had done strong things, and he was a Jerseyman born, a Norman of the
+Normans.  The Royal Court had judged between him and Guida, doing tardy
+justice to her, but of him they had ever been proud; and where conscience
+condemned here, vanity commended there.  In any event they reserved the
+right, independent of all non-Jersiais, to do what they chose with their
+dead.
+
+For what Philip had been as an admiral they would do his body reverence
+now; for what he had done as a man, that belonged to another tribunal.
+It had been proposed by the Admiral of the station to bury him from his
+old ship, the Imperturbable, but the Royal Court made its claim, and so
+his body had lain in state in the Cohue Royale.  The Admiral joined hands
+with the island authorities.  In both cases it was a dogged loyalty.  The
+sailors of England knew Philip d'Avranche as a fighter, even as the Royal
+Court knew him as a famous and dominant Jerseyman.  A battle-ship is a
+world of its own, and Jersey is a world of its own.  They neither knew
+nor cared for the comment of the world without; or, knowing, refused to
+consider it.
+
+When the body of Philip was carried from the Cohue Royale signals were
+made to the Imperturbable in the tide-way.  From all her ships in company
+forty guns were fired funeral-wise and the flags were struck halfmast.
+
+Slowly the cortege uncoiled itself to one long unbroken line from the
+steps of the Cohue Royale to the porch of the church.  The Jurats in
+their red robes, the officers, sailors, and marines, added colour to the
+pageant.  The coffin was covered by the flag of Jersey with the arms of
+William the Conqueror in the canton.  Of the crowd some were curious,
+some stoical; some wept, some essayed philosophy.
+
+"Et ben," said one, "he was a brave admiral!"
+
+"Bravery was his trade," answered another: "act like a sheep and you'll
+be eaten by the wolf."
+
+"It was a bad business about her that was Guida Landresse," remarked a
+third.
+
+"Every man knows himself, God knows all men," snuffled the fanatical
+barber who had once delivered a sermon from the Pompe des Brigands.
+
+"He made things lively while he lived, ba su!" droned the jailer of the
+Vier Prison.  "But he has folded sails now."
+
+"Ma fe, yes, he sleeps like a porpoise now, and white as a wax he looked
+up there in the Cohue Royale," put in a centenier standing by.
+
+A voice came shrilly over the head of the centenier.  "As white as you'll
+look yellow one day, bat'd'lagoule!  Yellow and green, oui-gia--yellow
+like a bad apple, and cowardly green as a leek."  This was Manon Moignard
+the witch.
+
+"Man doux d'la vie, where's the Master of Burials?" babbled the jailer.
+"The apprentice does the obs'quies to-day."
+
+"The Master's sick of a squinzy," grunted the centenier.  "So hatchet-
+face and bundle-o'-nails there brings dust to dust, amen."
+
+All turned now to the Undertaker's Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure
+with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which
+lurked a callous smile.  The burial of the great, the execution of the
+wicked, were alike to him.  In him Fate seemed to personify life's
+revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies.  The flag-draped
+coffin was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked back to
+Philip.  "They say it was all empty honours with him afore he died
+abroad."
+
+"A full belly's a full belly if it's only full of straw," snapped Manon
+Moignard.
+
+"Who was it brought him home?" asked the jailer.  "None that was born on
+Jersey, but two that lived here," remarked Maitre Damian, the
+schoolmaster from St. Aubins.
+
+"That Chevalier of Champsavoys and the other Duc de Bercy," interposed
+the centenier.
+
+Maitre Damian tapped his stick upon the ground, and said oracularly: "It
+is not for me to say, but which is the rightful Duke and which is not,
+there is the political question!"
+
+"Pardi, that's it," answered the centenier.  "Why did Detricand Duke turn
+Philip Duke out of duchy, see him killed, then fetch him home to Jersey
+like a brother?  Ah, man pethe benin, that's beyond me!
+
+"Those great folks does things their own ways; oui-gia," remarked the
+jailer.
+
+"Why did Detricand Duke go back to France?" asked Maitre Damian, cocking
+his head wisely; "why did he not stay for obsequies--he?"
+
+"That's what I say," answered the jailer, "those great folks does things
+their own ways."
+
+"Ma fistre, I believe you," ejaculated the centenier.  "But for the
+Chevalier there, for a Frenchman, that is a man after God's own heart--
+and mine."
+
+"Ah then, look at that," said Manon Moignard, with a sneer, "when one
+pleases you and God it is a ticket to heaven, diantre!"
+
+But in truth what Detricand and the Chevalier had done was but of human
+pity.  The day after the duel, Detricand had arrived in Paris to proceed
+thence to Bercy.  There he heard of Philip's death and of Damour's
+desertion.  Sending officers to Bercy to frustrate any possible designs
+of Damour, he, with the Chevalier, took Philip's body back to Jersey,
+delivering it to those who would do it honour.
+
+Detricand did not see Guida.  For all that might be said to her now the
+Chevalier should be his mouthpiece.  In truth there could be no better
+mouthpiece for him.  It was Detricand--Detricand--Detricand, like a
+child, in admiration and in affection.  If Guida did not understand all
+now, there should come a time when she would understand.  Detricand would
+wait.  She should find that he was just, that her honour and the honour
+of her child were safe with him.
+
+As for Guida, it was not grief she felt in the presence of this tragedy.
+No spark of love sprang up, even when remembrance was now brought to its
+last vital moment.  But a fathomless pity stirred her heart, that
+Philip's life had been so futile and that all he had done was come to
+naught.  His letter, blotched and blotted by his own dead cheek, she read
+quietly.  Yet her heart ached bitterly--so bitterly that her face became
+pinched with pain; for here in this letter was despair, here was the
+final agony of a broken life, here were the last words of the father of
+her child to herself.  She saw with a sudden pang that in writing of
+Guilbert he only said your child, not ours.  What a measureless distance
+there was between them in the hour of his death, and how clearly the
+letter showed that he understood at last!
+
+The evening before the burial she went with the Chevalier to the Cohue
+Royale.  As she looked at Philip's dead face bitterness and aching
+compassion were quieted within her.  The face was peaceful--strong.
+There was on it no record of fret or despair.  Its impassive dignity
+seemed to say that all accounts had been settled, and in this finality
+there was quiet; as though he had paid the price, as though the long
+account against him in the markets of life was closed and cancelled,
+and the debtor freed from obligation for ever.  Poignant impulses in her
+stilled, pity lost its wounding acuteness.  She shed no tears, but at
+last she stretched out her hand and let it rest upon his forehead for a
+moment.
+
+"Poor Philip!" she said.
+
+Then she turned and slowly left the room, followed by the Chevalier, and
+by the noiseless Dormy Jamais, who had crept in behind them.  As Dormy
+Jamais closed the door, he looked back to where the coffin lay, and in
+the compassion of fools he repeated Guida's words:
+
+"Poor Philip!" he said.
+
+Now, during Philip's burial, Dormy Jamais sat upon the roof of the Cohue
+Royale, as he had done on the day of the Battle of Jersey, looking down
+on the funeral cortege and the crowd.  He watched it all until the ruffle
+of drums at the grave told that the body was being lowered--four ruffles
+for an admiral.
+
+As the people began to disperse and the church bell ceased tolling, Dormy
+turned to another bell at his elbow, and set it ringing to call the Royal
+Court together.  Sharp, mirthless, and acrid it rang:
+
+Chicane--chicane!  Chicane--chicane!  Chicane--chicane!
+
+
+
+
+IN JERSEY-A YEAR LATER
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+"What is that for?" asked the child, pointing.  Detricand put the watch
+to the child's ear.  "It's to keep time.  Listen.  Do you hear it-tic-
+tic, tic-tic?"'
+
+The child nodded his head gleefully, and his big eyes blinked with
+understanding.  "Doesn't it ever stop?" he asked.
+
+"This watch never stops," replied Detricand.  "But there are plenty of
+watches that do."
+
+"I like watches," said the child sententiously.
+
+"Would you like this one?" asked Detricand.
+
+The child drew in a gurgling breath of pleasure.  "I like it.  Why
+doesn't mother have a watch?"
+
+The man did not answer the last question.  "You like it?" he said again,
+and he nodded his head towards the little fellow.  "H'm, it keeps good
+time, excellent time it keeps," and he rose to meet the child's mother,
+who having just entered the room, stood looking at them.  It was Guida.
+She had heard the last words, and she glanced towards the watch
+curiously.  Detricand smiled in greeting, and said to her: "Do you
+remember it?"  He held up the watch.
+
+She came forward eagerly.  "Is it--is it that indeed, the watch that the
+dear grandpethe--?"
+
+He nodded and smiled.  "Yes, it has never once stopped since the moment
+he gave it me in the Vier-Marchi seven years ago.  It has had a charmed
+existence amid many rough doings and accidents.  I was always afraid of
+losing it, always afraid of an accident to it.  It has seemed to me that
+if I could keep it things would go right with me, and things come out
+right in the end.  Superstition, of course, but I lived a long time in
+Jersey.  I feel more a Jerseyman than a Frenchman sometimes."
+
+Although his look seemed to rest but casually on her face, it was evident
+he was anxious to feel the effect of every word upon her, and he added:
+"When the Sieur de Mauprat gave me the watch he said, 'May no time be ill
+spent that it records for you.'"
+
+"Perhaps he knows his wish was fulfilled," answered Guida.
+
+"You think, then, that I've kept my promise?"
+
+"I am sure he would say so," she replied warmly.
+
+"It isn't the promise I made to him that I mean, but the promise I made
+to you."
+
+She smiled brightly.  "You know what I think of that.  I told you long
+ago."  She turned her head away, for a bright colour had come to her
+cheek.  "You have done great things, Prince," she added in a low tone.
+
+He flashed a look of inquiry at her.  To his ear there was in her voice a
+little touch--not of bitterness, but of something, as it were, muffled or
+reserved.  Was she thinking how he had robbed her child of the chance of
+heritage at Bercy?  He did not reply, but, stooping, put the watch again
+to the child's ear.  "There you are, monseigneur!"
+
+"Why do you call him monseigneur?" she asked.  "Guilbert has no title
+to your compliment."
+
+A look half-amused, half-perplexed, crossed over Detricand's face.  "Do
+you think so?" he said musingly.  Stooping once more, he said to the
+child: "Would you like the watch?" and added quickly, "you shall have it
+when you're grown up."
+
+"Do you really mean it?" asked Guida, delighted; "do you really mean to
+give him the grandpethe's watch one day?"
+
+"Oh yes, at least that--one day.  But I have something more," he added
+quickly--" something more for you;" and he drew from his pocket a
+miniature set in rubies and diamonds.  "I have brought you this from the
+Duc de Mauban--and this," he went on, taking a letter from his pocket,
+and handing it with the gift.  "The Duke thought you might care to have
+it.  It is the face of your godmother, the Duchess Guidabaldine."
+
+Guida looked at the miniature earnestly, and then said a little
+wistfully: "How beautiful a face--but the jewels are much too fine for
+me!  What should one do here with rubies and diamonds?  How can I thank
+the Duke!"
+
+"Not so.  He will thank you for accepting it.  He begged me to say--as
+you will find by his letter to you--that if you will but go to him upon a
+visit with this great man here"--pointing to the child with a smile--
+"he will count it one of the greatest pleasures of his life.  He is too
+old to come to you, but he begs you to go to him--the Chevalier, and you,
+and Guilbert here.  He is much alone now, and he longs for a little of
+that friendship which can be given by but few in this world.  He counts
+upon your coming, for I said I thought you would."
+
+"It would seem so strange," she answered, "to go from this cottage of my
+childhood, to which I have come back in peace at last--from this kitchen,
+to the chateau of the Duc de Mauban."
+
+"But it was sure to come," he answered.  "This kitchen to which I come
+also to redeem my pledge after seven years, it belongs to one part of
+your life.  But there is another part to fulfil,"--he stooped and passed
+his hands over the curls of the child," and for your child here you
+should do it."
+
+"I do not find your meaning," she said after a moment's deliberation.
+"I do not know what you would have me understand."
+
+"In some ways you and I would be happier in simple surroundings," he
+replied gravely, "but it would seem that to play duly our part in the
+world, we must needs move in wider circles.  To my mind this kitchen is
+the most delightful spot in the world.  Here I took a fresh commission of
+life.  I went out, a sort of battered remnant, to a forlorn hope; and now
+I come back to headquarters once again--not to be praised," he added in
+an ironical tone, and with a quick gesture of almost boyish shyness--
+"not to be praised; only to show that from a grain of decency left in a
+man may grow up some sheaves of honest work and plain duty."
+
+"No, it is much more than that, it is much, much more than that," she
+broke in.
+
+"No, I am afraid it is not," he answered; "but that is not what I wished
+to say.  I wished to say that for monseigneur here--"
+
+A little flash of anger came into her eyes.  He is no monseigneur, he is
+Guilbert d'Avranche," she said bitterly.  "It is not like you to mock my
+child, Prince.  Oh, I know you mean it playfully," she hurriedly added,
+"but--but it does not sound right to me."
+
+"For the sake of monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy," he added,
+laying his hand upon the child's head, "these things your devout friends
+suggest, you should do, Princess."
+
+Her clear unwavering eye looked steadfastly at him, but her face turned
+pale.
+
+"Why do you call him monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy?" she
+said almost coldly, and with a little fear in her look too.
+
+"Because I have come here to tell you the truth, and to place in your
+hands the record of an act of justice."
+
+Drawing from his pocket a parchment gorgeous with seals, he stooped, and
+taking the hands of the child, he placed it in them.  "Hold it tight,
+hold it tight, my little friend, for it is your very own," he said to the
+child with cheerful kindliness.  Then stepping back a little, and looking
+earnestly at Guida, he added with a motion of the hand towards the child:
+
+"You must learn the truth from him."
+
+"Oh, what can you mean--what can you mean?" she exclaimed.  Dropping
+upon her knees, and running an arm round the child, she opened the
+parchment and read.
+
+"What--what right has he to this?" she cried in a voice of dismay.
+"A year ago you dispossessed his father from the duchy.  Ah, I do not
+understand it!  You--only you are the Duc de Bercy."
+
+Her eyes were shining with a happy excitement and tenderness.  No such
+look had been in them for many a day.  Something that had long slept was
+waking in her, something long voiceless was speaking.  This man brought
+back to her heart a glow she had never thought to feel again, the glow of
+the wonder of life and of a girlish faith.
+
+"I am only Detricand of Vaufontaine," he answered.  "What, did you--could
+you think that I would dispossess your child?  His father was the adopted
+son of the Duc de Bercy.  Nothing could wipe that out, neither law nor
+nations.  You are always Princess Guida, and your child is always Prince
+Guilbert d'Avranche--and more than that."
+
+His voice became lower, his war-beaten face lighted with that fire and
+force which had made him during years past a figure in the war records of
+Europe.
+
+"I unseated Philip d'Avranche," he continued, "because he acquired the
+duchy through--a misapprehension; because the claims of the House of
+Vaufontaine were greater.  We belonged; he was an alien.  He had a right
+to his adoption, he had no right to his duchy--no real right in the
+equity of nations.  But all the time I never forgot that the wife of
+Philip d'Avranche and her child had rights infinitely beyond his own.
+All that he achieved was theirs by every principle of justice.  My plain
+duty was to win for your child that succession belonging to him by all
+moral right.  When Philip d'Avranche was killed, I set to work to do for
+your child what had been done by another for Philip d'Avranche.  I have
+made him my heir.  When he is of age I shall abdicate from the duchy in
+his favour.  This deed, countersigned by the Powers that dispossessed his
+father, secures to him the duchy when he is old enough to govern."
+
+Guida had listened like one in a dream.  A hundred feelings possessed
+her, and one more than all.  She suddenly saw all Detricand's goodness to
+her stretch out in a long line of devoted friendship, from this day to
+that far-off hour seven years before, when he had made a vow to her--
+kept how nobly!  Devoted friendship--was it devoted friendship alone,
+even with herself?  In a tumult of emotions she answered him hurriedly.
+"No, no, no, no!  I cannot accept it.  This is not justice, this is a
+gift for which there is no example in the world's history."
+
+"I thought it best," he went on quietly, "to govern Bercy myself during
+these troubled years.  So far its neutrality has been honoured, but who
+can tell what may come!  As a Vaufontaine it is my duty to see that
+Bercy's interests are duly protected amidst the troubles of Europe."
+
+Guida got to her feet now and stood looking dazedly at the parchment in
+her hand.  The child, feeling himself neglected, ran out into the garden.
+
+There was moisture in Guida's eyes as she presently said: "I had not
+thought that any man could be so noble--no, not even you."
+
+"You should not doubt yourself so," he answered meaningly.  "I am the
+work of your hands.  If I have fought my way back to reputable life
+again--"
+
+He paused, and took from his pocket a handkerchief.  "This was the gage,"
+he said, holding it up.  "Do you remember the day I came to return it to
+you, and carried it off again?"
+
+"It was foolish of you to keep it," she answered softly, "as foolish of
+you as to think that I shall accept for my child these great honours."
+
+"But suppose the child in after years should blame you?" he answered
+slowly and with emphasis.  "Suppose that Guilbert should say, What right
+had you, my mother, to refuse what was my due?"
+
+This was the question she had asked herself long, long ago.  It smote her
+heart now.  What right had she to reject this gift of Fate to her child?
+
+Scarcely above a whisper she replied: "Of course he might say that, but
+how, oh, how should we simple folk, he and I, be fitted for these high
+places--yet?  Now that what I desired all these years for him has come,
+I have not the courage."
+
+"You have friends to help you in all you do," he answered meaningly.
+
+"But friends cannot always be with one," she answered.
+
+"That depends upon the friends.  There is one friend of yours who has
+known you for eighteen years.  Eighteen years' growth should make a
+strong friendship--there was always friendship on his part at least.  He
+can be a still stronger and better friend.  He comes now to offer you the
+remainder of a life for which your own goodness is the guarantee.  He
+comes to offer you a love of which your own soul must be the only judge,
+for you have eyes that see and a spirit that knows.  The Chevalier needs
+you, and the Duc de Mauban needs you, but Detricand of Vaufontaine needs
+you a thousand times more."
+
+"Oh, hush--but no, you must not!" she broke in, her face all crimson,
+her lips trembling.
+
+"But yes, I must," he answered quickly.  "You find peace here, but it is
+the peace of inaction.  It dulls the brain, and life winds in upon itself
+wearily at the last.  But out there is light and fire and action and the
+quick-beating pulse, and the joy of power wisely used, even to the end.
+You come of a great people, you were born to great things; your child has
+rights accorded now by every Court of Europe.  You must act for him.  For
+your child's sake, for my sake come out into the great field of life with
+me--as my wife, Guida."
+
+She turned to him frankly, she looked at him steadfastly, the colour in
+her face came and went, but her eyes glowed with feeling.
+
+"After all that has happened?" she asked in a low tone.
+
+"It could only be because of all that has happened," he answered.
+
+"No, no, you do not understand," she said quickly, a great pain in her
+voice.  "I have suffered so, these many, many years!  I shall never be
+light-hearted again.  And I am not fitted for such high estate.  Do you
+not see what you ask of me--to go from this cottage to a palace?"
+
+"I love you too well to ask you to do what you could not.  You must trust
+me," he answered, "you must give your life its chance, you must--"
+
+"But listen to me," she interjected with breaking tones; "I know as
+surely as I know--as I know the face of my child, that the youth in me is
+dead.  My summer came--and went--long ago.  No, no, you do not
+understand--I would not make you unhappy.  I must live only to make my
+child happy.  That love has not been marred."
+
+"And I must be judge of what is for my own happiness.  And for yours--if
+I thought my love would make you unhappy for even one day, I should not
+offer it.  I am your lover, but I am also your friend.  Had it not been
+for you I might have slept in a drunkard's grave in Jersey.  Were it not
+for you, my bones would now be lying in the Vendee.  I left my peasants,
+I denied myself death with them to serve you.  The old cause is gone.
+You and your child are now my only cause--"
+
+"You make it so hard for me," she broke in.  "Think of the shadows from
+the past always in my eyes, always in my heart--you cannot wear the
+convict's chain without the lagging footstep afterwards."
+
+"Shadows--friend of my soul, how should I dare come to you if there had
+never been shadows in your life!  It is because you--you have suffered,
+because you know, that I come.  Out of your miseries, the convict's
+lagging step, you say?  Think what I was.  There was never any wrong in
+you, but I was sunk in evil depths of folly--"
+
+"I will not have you say so," she interrupted; "you never in your life
+did a dishonourable thing."
+
+"Then again I say, trust me.  For, on the honour of a Vaufontaine,
+I believe that happiness will be yours as my wife.  The boy, you see how
+he and I--"
+
+"Ah, you are so good to him!"
+
+"You must give me chance and right to serve him.  What else have you or I
+to look forward to?  The honours of this world concern us little.  The
+brightest joys are not for us.  We have work before us, no rainbow
+ambitions.  But the boy--think for him---" he paused.
+
+After a little, she held out her hand towards him.  "Good-bye," she said
+softly.
+
+"Good-bye--you say good-bye to me!" he exclaimed in dismay.
+
+"Till--till to-morrow," she answered, and she smiled.  The smile had a
+little touch of the old archness which was hers as a child, yet, too, a
+little of the sadness belonging to the woman.  But her hand-clasp was
+firm and strong; and her touch thrilled him.  Power was there, power with
+infinite gentleness.  And he understood her; which was more than all.
+
+He turned at the door.  She was standing very still, the parchment with
+the great seals yet in her hand.  Without speaking, she held it out to
+him, as though uncertain what to do with it.
+
+As he passed through the doorway he smiled, and said:
+
+"To-morrow--to-morrow!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+St. John's Eve had passed.  In the fields at Bonne-Nuit Bay the "Brow-
+brow!  ben-ben!" of the Song of the Cauldron had affrighted the night;
+riotous horns, shaming the blare of a Witches' Sabbath, had been blown
+by those who, as old Jean Touzel said, carried little lead under their
+noses.  The meadows had been full of the childlike islanders welcoming in
+the longest day of the year.  Mid-summer Day had also come and gone, but
+with less noise and clamour, for St. John's Fair had been carried on with
+an orderly gaiety--as the same Jean Touzel said, like a sheet of music.
+Even the French singers and dancers from St. Malo had been approved in
+Norman phrases by the Bailly and the Jurats, for now there was no longer
+war between England and France, Napoleon was at St. Helena, and the
+Bourbons were come again to their own.
+
+It had been a great day, and the roads were cloudy with the dust of Mid-
+summer revellers going to their homes.  But though some went many stayed,
+camping among the booths, since the Fair was for tomorrow and for other
+to-morrows after.  And now, the day's sport being over, the superstitious
+were making the circle of the rock called William's Horse in Boulay Bay,
+singing the song of William, who, with the fabled sprig of sacred
+mistletoe, turned into a rock the kelpie horse carrying him to death.
+
+There was one boat, however, which putting out into the Bay did not bear
+towards William's Horse, but, catching the easterly breeze, bore away
+westward towards the point of Plemont.  Upon the stern of the boat was
+painted in bright colours, Hardi Biaou.  "We'll be there soon after
+sunset," said the grizzled helmsman, Jean Touzel, as he glanced from the
+full sail to the setting sun.
+
+Neither of his fellow-voyagers made reply, and for a time there was
+silence, save for the swish of the gunwale through the water.  But at
+last Jean said:
+
+"Su' m'n ame, but it is good this, after that!" and he jerked his head
+back towards the Fair-ground on the hill.  "Even you will sleep to-night,
+Dormy Jamais, and you, my wife of all."
+
+Maitresse Aimable shook her great head slowly on the vast shoulders, and
+shut her heavy eyelids.  "Dame, but I think you are sleeping now--you,"
+Jean went on.
+
+Maitresse Aimable's eyes opened wide, and again she shook her head.
+
+Jean looked a laugh at her through his great brass-rimmed spectacles and
+added:
+
+"Ba su, then I know.  It is because we go to sleep in my hut at Plemont
+where She live so long.  I know, you never sleep there."
+
+Maitresse Aimable shook her head once more, and drew from her pocket a
+letter.
+
+At sight of it Dormy Jamais crawled quickly over to where the Femme de
+Ballast sat, and, 'reaching out, he touched it with both hands.
+
+"Princess of all the world--bidemme," he said, and he threw out his arms
+and laughed.
+
+Two great tears were rolling down Maitresse Aimable's cheeks.
+
+"How to remember she, ma fuifre!" said Jean Touzel.  "But go on to the
+news of her."
+
+Maitresse Aimable spread the letter out and looked at it lovingly.  Her
+voice rose slowly up like a bubble from the bottom of a well, and she
+spoke.
+
+"Ah man pethe benin, when it come, you are not here, my Jean.  I take it
+to the Greffier to read for me.  It is great news, but the way he read so
+sour I do not like, ba su!  I see Maitre Damian the schoolmaster pass my
+door.  I beckon, and he come.  I take my letter here, I hold it close to
+his eyes.  'Read on that for me, Maitre Damian--you,' I say.  O my good,
+when he read it, it sing sweet like a song, pergui!  Once, two, three
+times I make him read it out--he has the voice so soft and round, Maitre
+Damian there."
+
+"Glad and good!" interrupted Jean.  "What is the news, my wife?  What is
+the news of highnesss--he?"
+
+Maitresse Aimable smiled, then she tried to speak, but her voice broke.
+
+"The son--the son--at last he is the Duke of Bercy.  E'fin, it is all
+here.  The new King of France, he is there at the palace when the child
+which it have sleep on my breast, which its mother I have love all the
+years, kiss her son as the Duke of Bercy."
+
+"Ch'est ben," said Jean, "you can trust the good God in the end."
+
+Dormy Jamais did not speak.  His eyes were fastened upon the north, where
+lay the Paternoster Rocks.  The sun had gone down, the dusk was creeping
+on, and against the dark of the north there was a shimmer of fire--a fire
+that leapt and quivered about the Paternoster Rocks.
+
+Dormy pointed with his finger.  Ghostly lights or miracle of Nature,
+these fitful flames had come and gone at times these many years, and now
+again the wonder of the unearthly radiance held their eyes.
+
+"Gatd'en'ale, I don't understand you--you!" said Jean, speaking to the
+fantastic fires as though they were human.
+
+"There's plenty things we see we can't understand, and there's plenty we
+understand we can't never see.  Ah bah, so it goes!" said Maitresse
+Aimable, and she put Guida's letter in her bosom.
+
+                    .......................
+
+Upon the hill of Plemont above them, a stone taken from the chimney of
+the hut where Guida used to live, stood upright beside a little grave.
+Upon it was carved:
+
+                                BIRIBI,
+                              Fidele ami
+                            De quels jours!
+
+In the words of Maitresse Aimable, "Ah bah, so it goes."
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+NOTE:
+IT is possible that students of English naval history may find in the
+life of Philip d'Avranche, as set forth in this book, certain
+resemblances to the singular and long forgotten career of the young
+Jerseyman, Philip d'Auvergne of the "Arethusa," who in good time became
+Vice-Admiral of the White and His Serene Highness the Duke of Bouillon.
+
+Because all the relatives and direct descendants of Admiral Prince Philip
+d'Auvergne are dead, I am the more anxious to state that, apart from one
+main incident, the story here-before written is not taken from the life
+of that remarkable man.  Yet I will say also that I have drawn upon the
+eloquence, courage, and ability of Philip d'Auvergne to make the better
+part of Philip d'Avranche, whose great natural fault, an overleaping
+ambition, was the same fault that brought the famous Prince Admiral to a
+piteous death in the end.
+
+In any case, this tale has no claim to be called a historical novel.
+
+
+
+
+
+JERSEY WORDS AND PHRASES
+
+WITH THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH
+
+A bi'tot = a bientot.
+Achocre = dolt, ass.
+Ah bah!  (Difficult to render in English, but meaning much the same as
+"Well!  well!")
+Ah be! = eh bien.
+Alles kedainne = to go quickly, to skedaddle.
+Bachouar = a fool.
+Ba su! = bien sur.
+Bashin = large copper-lined stew-pan.
+Batd'lagoule = chatterbox.
+Bedgone = shortgown or deep bodice of print.
+Beganne = daft fellow.
+Biaou = beau.
+Bidemme! = exclamation of astonishment.
+Bouchi = mouthful.
+Bilzard = idiot.
+Chelin = shilling.
+Ch'est ben = c'est bien.
+Cotil = slope of a dale.
+Coum est qu'on etes?         }
+Coum est qu'ou vos portest?  } Comment vous portez-vous!
+Couzain or couzaine = cousin.
+Crasset = metal oil-lamp of classic shape.
+Critchett = cricket.
+Diantre = diable.
+Dreschiaux = dresser.
+E'fant = enfant.
+E'fin = enfin.
+Eh ben = eh bien.
+Esmanus = scarecrow.
+Es-tu gentiment? = are you well?
+Et ben = and now.
+Gache-a-penn! = misery me!
+Gaderabotin! = deuce take it!
+Garche = lass.
+Gatd'en'ale! = God be with us!
+Grandpethe = grandpere.
+Han = kind of grass for the making of ropes, baskets, etc.
+Hanap = drinking-cup.
+Hardi = very.
+Hus = lower half of a door.  (Doors of many old Jersey houses were
+divided horizontally, for protection against cattle, to let out the
+smoke, etc.)
+Je me crais; je to crais; je crais ben! = I believe it; true for you; I
+                                        well believe it!
+Ma fe!     }
+Ma fistre! }= ma foi!
+Ma fuifre! }
+Mai grand doux! = but goodness gracious!
+Man doux! = my good, oh dear!  (Originally man Dieu!)
+Man doux d'la vie! = upon my life!
+Man gui, mon pethe! = mon Dieu, mon pere!
+Man pethe benin! = my good father!
+Marchi = marche.
+Mogue = drinking-cup.
+Nannin; nannin-gia! = no; no indeed!
+Ni bouf ni baf   } Expression of absolute negation, untranslatable.
+Ni fiche ni bran }
+Oui-gia! = yes indeed!
+Par made = par mon Dieu.
+Pardi!     }
+Pardingue! }= old forms of par Dieul
+Pergui!    }
+Pend'loque = ragamuffin.
+Queminzolle = overcoat.
+Racllyi = hanging rack from the rafters of a kitchen.
+Respe d'la compagnie! = with all respect for present company.
+Shale ben = very well.
+Simnel = a sort of biscuit, cup-shaped, supposed to represent unleavened
+        bread, specially eaten at Easter.
+Soupe a la graisse = very thin soup, chiefly made of water, with a few
+                  vegetables and some dripping.
+Su' m'n ame = sur mon ame!
+Tcheche? = what's that you say?
+Trejous = toujours.
+Tres-ba = tres bien.
+Veille = a wide low settle.  (Probably from lit de fouaille.)  Also
+   applied to evening gatherings, when, sitting cross-legged on the
+   veille, the neighbours sang, talked, and told stories.
+Verges = the land measure of Jersey, equal to forty perches.  Two and a
+       quarter vergees are equivalent to the English acre.
+Vier = vieux.
+Vraic = a kind of sea-weed.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BATTLE OF THE STRONG, PARKER, V6 ***
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