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Updated: June 13, 2025
The door was locked: but even as the young man hesitated for a moment wondering what he would do next, a firm step resounded on the floor on the other side of the partition and the next moment the door was opened from within, and a peremptory voice issued the usual challenge: "Who goes there?" A tall figure appeared as a massive silhouette under the lintel. St. Genis had the candle in his hand.
In this same impious malapert he had recognised M. le Marquis de St. Genis! The young man looked to be labouring under terrible excitement: his face was flushed and he was panting as if he had been running hard: "M. le Comte!" he cried breathlessly as soon as he caught sight of Hector, "tell M. le Comte that I must speak with him at once." "But M. le Marquis .
"Ask him, Mademoiselle Crystal, ask him where is the man who to-day saved his life? whom I myself saw to-day on the roadside, wounded and half dead with fatigue, on horseback, with the inert body of M. de St. Genis lying across his saddle-bow.
De Marmont's keen eyes took in the situation at a glance: he threw a quick look of savage hatred on St. Genis and cast one of contemptuous pity on Clyffurde. Then with a shrug of the shoulders and a light, triumphant laugh, he set spurs to his horse and rode swiftly away.
Genis, as he warmed to his tale, lost the shame of it; only wrath remained with him: anger that he should be forced into this despicable rôle through the intrigues of a rival. In his heart he was already beginning to find innumerable excuses for his cowardice: and his rage and hatred grew against Clyffurde as Madame's more and more persistent questions taxed his imagination almost to exhaustion.
To every word he says, the men but oppose the one cry: "Vive l'Empereur!" The Comte de Cambray turns in despair to M. de St. Genis, who is a captain of artillery and whose men had hitherto been supposed to be tried and loyal royalists. "If the men won't fire, Maurice," asks the Comte in despair, "cannot the officers at least fire the first shot?" "M. le Comte," replies St.
"Crystal," he said, forcing himself to speak quietly, even though his voice quivered with excitement and passionate wrath, "as you say, I have only a few moments to spare, but they are just long enough for me to tell you that it is you who are mad. I daresay that it is difficult to believe in the immensity of a disaster. M. de St. Genis no doubt has been filling your ears with tales of the allied armies' victories. But look at me, Crystal look at me and tell me if you have ever seen a man more in deadly earnest. I tell you that I am on my way to aid the Emperor in reforming his Empire on a more solid basis than it has ever stood before. Have you ever known Napoleon to fail in what he set himself to do? I tell you that he is not crushed that he is not even defeated. Within a month the allies will be on their knees begging for peace. The era of your Bourbon kings is more absolutely dead to-day than it has ever been. And after to-day there will be nothing for a royalist like your father or like Maurice de St. Genis but exile and humiliation more dire than before. Your father's fate rests entirely in your hands. I can direct his destiny, his life or his death, just as I please. When you are my wife, I will forgive him the insults which he heaped on me at Brestalou .
Bobby remembered them so well, for one of these two officers was Maurice de St. Genis.
Genis' story of lonely inns, of murderous banditti and whatnots, well then, I give you that information for what you may choose to make of it." And with a final friendly nod and a gentle pressure of her aristocratic hand on his, which warmed and comforted Bobby's sore heart, she turned away from him and was quickly swallowed up by the crowd.
Genis was absolutely speechless with surprise as well as with anger, there crept into Clyffurde's deep-set grey eyes a strange look of amusement, as if the humour of his present position was more obvious than its shame. "And what," he asked pleasantly, "has procured me the honour at this late hour of a visit from M. le Marquis de St. Genis?" His words broke the spell.
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