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"No doubt; you are a sentimental personage, I hear: one who shed tears when the order was given to sack Mannheim." "I am not ashamed of those tears," returned Montclas. "For three months these much enduring people have exerted themselves to do our bidding, treating us like guests who had come to them as foes.
General Montclas himself shed tears when Mannheim was sacked and destroyed; and, when the people of Durlach were driven by your soldiery into the very midst of the flames that were consuming their homes, the Duke de la Roche remonstrated with the Marquis de Crequi on the atrocity of the crime. What do you suppose was the answer of the marquis? 'Le roi le veut!"
"We are assassins and incendiaries, but we have never yet fought a battle like men," resumed De Feuquiere. "No," added Montclas. "We have longed in vain for honorable warfare; for a fair combat before the light of heaven, face to face with men armed like ourselves; and we are sick at heart of midnight torches and midnight murders."
General Montclas took the paper, and read in an audible voice: "'It is now two weeks since I have seen a courier from the army. What are you about that I receive no more accounts of the destruction of German cities wherewith to entertain the idle hours of his majesty? You have been ordered to devastate the entire German frontier.
"You can justify yourself by referring the Almighty to me, as I shall certainly justify myself by referring Him to Monsieur Louvois. It is true that I do not weep when I carry out his orders; but you may judge for yourselves whether I transcend them, General Montclas, be so good as to read aloud this dispatch."
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