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Updated: June 22, 2025
I had will enough to meet him, and to kill him too, yet I could not help but think of Alixe. Gabord saw him, also, and, being nearer, made for me as well. For that act I cherish his memory. The thought was worthy of a gentleman of breeding; he had the true thing in his heart. He would save us two brothers from fighting, by fighting me himself.
"Gabord," said I, "I come not as a spy; I come to seek my wife, and she counts you as her friend. Do harm to me, and you do harm to her. Serve me, and you serve her. Gabord, you said to her once that I was an honourable man." He put up his pistol. "Aho, you've put your head in the trap. Stir, and click goes the spring." "I must have my wife," I continued.
She spoke without faltering, save here and there; but even then I could see her brave spirit quelling the riot of her emotions, shutting down the sluice-gate of tears. "I knew," she said, her hand clasped in mine, "that Gabord was the only person like to be admitted to you, and so for days, living in fear lest the worst should happen, I have prepared for this chance.
In spite of the joy I felt at being near her, seeing her, I shrank from the situation. If I escaped from the Seigneur Duvarney's, it would throw suspicion upon him, upon Alixe, and that made me stand abashed. Inside the Seigneur Duvarney's house I should now feel unhappy, bound to certain calls of honour concerning his daughter and himself. I stood long, thinking, Gabord watching me.
Suppose it was but for a year or two: had I the right to give her sorrow for that time, if I could prevent it, even at the cost of honour with the dead? Was it not my duty to act, and at once? Time was short. While in a swift moment I was debating, Gabord opened the door, and said, "Come, end it, end it. Gabord has a head to save!"
"Gabord," said I, "you are not my jailer now." "I'll be your guard to citadel," said he, after a moment's dumb surprise, refusing my outstretched hand. "Neither guard nor jailer any more, Gabord," said I seriously. "We've had enough of that, my friend." The soldier and the jailer had been working in him, and his fingers trifled with the trigger. In all things he was the foeman first.
An hour after getting this good letter Gabord came again, and with him breakfast a word which I had almost dropped from my language. True, it was only in a dungeon, on a pair of stools, by the light of a torch, but how I relished it! a bottle of good wine, a piece of broiled fish, the half of a fowl, and some tender vegetables.
Gabord, you know it so, for you have guarded him and fought with him, and you are an honourable gentleman," she added gently. "No gentleman I," he burst forth, "but jailer base, and soldier born upon a truss of hay. But honour is an apple any man may eat since Adam walked in garden.... 'Tis honest foe, here," he continued magnanimously, and nodded towards me.
The day preceding that fixed for my execution came, yet there was no sign from friend or enemy without. At ten o'clock of that day Chaplain Wainfleet was admitted to me in the presence of Gabord and a soldier.
Through nearly closed eyelids however I saw Gabord enter. Doltaire stood in the doorway watching as the soldier knelt and lifted my arm to take off the bloody scarf. His manner was imperturbable as ever. Even then I wondered what his thoughts were, what pungent phrase he was suiting to the time and to me.
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