But while Stephen La Mothe still hesitated Commines took action. He recognized that sooner or later there must be a confronting. Ursula de Vesc, however deeply implicated, was no patient Griselda to accept judgment without a protest. Tacit admission would condemn the Dauphin equally with herself, and she might be trusted to fight for the Dauphin with every wile and subterfuge open to a desperate woman. In her natural attitude of indignation she would certainly force a crisis. The sooner the crisis came the better, and amongst those for whom that was better Philip de Commines was not the least. With all his heart he loathed the part he was compelled to play, even while determined to play it to its ghastly end. But to some men, Commines amongst them, the irrevocable brings a drugging of the sensibilities. When that which must be done could not be undone he would be at peace.

The sooner the crisis came the better, too, for Stephen La Mothe, and Commines' sympathies went out to him with an unwonted tenderness. The lad's nerves were flayed raw, and for him also there could be no peace until the inevitable end had come. But just what that end would be, and how it was to be reached, Commines feared to discuss even with himself.

But the first necessity was that Ursula de Vesc's complicity should be brought home to her. Let that be done, and La Mothe's despair might clear aside all difficulties, though, without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into a passive submission.

It was a truth he had proved. Suzanne's death had been as the plucking out of the very roots of life. In that first tremendous realization of loss there had been no place left for even God Himself. But that had passed. The All-Merciful has placed bounds on the tide of human suffering: Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. The maimed roots of life had budded afresh, and if no flower of love had shed its fragrance to bless the days, there had been peace. So would it be with Stephen La Mothe. But the Valley of Tribulation must first be crossed, and it would be the mercy of kindness to shorten the passage, even though the plunge into its shadows was the more swift. For that there must be conviction, and for the conviction a confronting. Villon was right, Ursula de Vesc and Jean Saxe should be set face to face within the hour.

"Monsieur Villon," he said with unaccustomed courtesy, "I agree with you. Hugues is dead, the Dauphin too high above us, but Mademoiselle de Vesc has the right to know the peril she stands in. Will you do us all a kindness and bring Jean Saxe to the ChÂteau? Monsieur La Mothe and I will——" he paused, searching for a word which would be conclusive and yet without offence, "will summon Mademoiselle de Vesc."

"It is an outrage," said La Mothe stubbornly, "and I protest against it, protest utterly."

"Stephen, try and understand," and Commines laid his hand upon the younger man's shoulder with something more than the persuasive appeal of the father who, to his sorrow, is at variance with the son of his love. It was the gesture of the friend, the equal, the elder in authority who might command but elects to reason. "Consider my position a moment. By the King's command I stand in his place in Amboise. If he were here——"

"God forbid!" said Villon. "The King is like heaven—dearly loved afar off."

"But his justice is here——"

"And his mercy?"

"And his mercy," repeated Commines coldly, "the mercy that gave you life when justice would have hung you as a rogue and a thief. Of all men you are the last who should sneer at the King's mercy. And now will you call Jean Saxe, or must I go myself?"

"As my friend La Mothe decides," answered Villon. "I advise it myself.
Give a lie a night's start and you will never catch it up."

"Stephen, son, be wise."

With a gesture of despair La Mothe would have turned away, but Commines held him fast. His faith was unshaken, but the natural reaction from the day's tense emotion had sapped its buoyancy, leaving it negative and inert rather than positive and aggressive. The half-hour's slackless concentration of nerve and muscle in the defence of the stairway had drained him of strength and energy like the crisis of a fever. For him Ursula de Vesc's curt No! stood against the world; but Philip de Commines was the King's justice in Amboise, and against Jean Saxe's accusation her denial would carry no weight—no weight at all. But, though the gesture was one of helplessness, Villon chose to construe it into consent.

"Good!" he said cordially, "it is best, much the best. In half an hour I will bring Saxe to—let me see, the Hercules room, I think, Monsieur d'Argenton? It is small, but large enough for the purpose, and as it has only one door it can be easily guarded."

"No guards," said Commines harshly. "There must be no publicity."

Villon laughed unpleasantly. His shifting mood had, almost for the first time in his life, felt kindly disposed towards Commines as he saw his evident solicitude for La Mothe, but that was forgotten in the contemptuous recall of a past he held should no longer rise against him. What the King forgave the King's minister should forget. The thrust had wounded his vanity, and now, as he saw his opening, he promptly thrust back in return.

"You are the King's justice in Amboise and would have no man know it! That is true modesty, Monsieur d'Argenton! No, don't fear, there will be no publicity. Monsieur La Mothe, he calls you son; but friend is more than kin, more than family, remember that Francois Villon says so."

Commines' answer was an upward shake of the head, a lifting of the shoulders hardly perceptible in the darkness.

"It is the nature of curs to snarl," he said. "But his impertinence grows insufferable and must be muzzled." Linking his arm into La Mothe's he drew him slowly along the garden path. Both were preoccupied by the same desire, to win the other to his own way of thinking, but it was the more cautious elder who spoke first. He would appeal to the very affection Villon had gibed at.

"Stephen, dear lad, with all my heart I grieve for you. Would to God it were anything but this. Mademoiselle de Vesc has always opposed me, but that is nothing; has always striven to thwart me, but for your sake that could be forgotten; has always flouted and belittled me, but for your sake that could be forgiven. You are as the son of my love, and what is there that love will not forgive—will not forget? These weigh nothing, nothing at all. In the face of this—this—tremendous crime against the King, against all France, I count them nothing, less than nothing. Dear lad, you must be brave. This worthless woman——"

"No, Uncle, no, not that, never that!" La Mothe's voice was as level and quiet as Commines' own, and the elder knew thereby that his difficulty was the greater. Quietness is always strong, always assured of itself. "I do not believe Saxe speaks the truth."

"Saxe is the spark, and I told you I smelt smoke. Even Villon admits, much against his will, that some one has approached Saxe."

"But not Hugues, and if that is untrue then all is untrue."

"No: there is no logic in that. Hugues or another, it matters little who it was. It is the fact that damns, and Saxe is explicit. And how can Villon be sure it was not Hugues?"

"Uncle, Uncle, you can't believe it, in your heart you can't believe it. All these days you have seen her, so gracious, so gentle, so womanly. It can't be true, it can't. There is some horrible mistake."

"Saxe is explicit, and Villon agrees with him," repeated Commines, driving home the inexorable point. "Nor can I help myself; the King has left me no alternative."

"Mademoiselle de Vesc has denied it to me, and I believe her."

"You believe her because you love her."

"No," answered La Mothe simply, "I believe her because I have faith in her, but even though she were all Saxe says, and more, I would stand by her because I love her."

Commines paused in his slow walk, slipped his hand from La Mothe's arm, and they stood silent side by side. Then in his perplexity he moved a few paces away, halted, turned again and faced La Mothe.

"Poor lad, and I have no alternative. The King and my duty alike allow me none. Stephen, in self-defence I must be frank with you. It is my firm belief that the King has evidence he cannot show openly——"

"And so a pretext will be enough? God in heaven! is that justice?"

"No, there must be something more than a pretext, something more than a lie; but Saxe will be enough."

"It will be enough if Saxe's lies cannot be disproved?"

"If Saxe cannot be disproved," corrected Commines. "I cannot admit that Saxe lies."

"And what then?"

Again Commines turned away. Humanity's Iron Age was as stern, as selfish, as callous, as cruel as in the days of Attila the Hun. Christianity, after its almost fifteen centuries, had no more than, as it were, warmed it through with its gentle fires. There was as yet no softening. It was true that some increasing flowers of civilization obscured the brutality, some decorations of art glorified it, but underneath the beauty and the art the native ruthlessness remained unchanged. Might founded a throne upon the ruin of weaker nations, cemented its strength with the blood of innocence, set the crown upon its own head, and reigned in arrogant defiance of right or justice.

From the barbarous Muscovite in the north to the polished Spaniard in the south the conditions scarcely varied. Everywhere there was the same spirit. A Louis pushed wide the borders of France by theft and the law of the stronger arm, a Ferdinand offered up his holocaust to the greater glory of God, a Philip yet to come would steep the Netherlands in blood to the very dikes that the same God might be worshipped in violation of the worshipper's conscience, in England a Crookback Richard had neither pity nor scruple when a crown was the reward of ruthlessness and murder.

Nor in the high places of religion was there a nobler law. A Sixtus, at that very moment, was letting loose the horrors of an unjust war upon Florence and Ferrara in the name of the Prince of Peace, while the sinister figure of Alexander Borgia sat upon the steps of the Papal throne biding its time. If the meek inherited the earth, it was commonly a territory six feet long and two in breadth. Everywhere the ancient rule was still the modern plan: those took who had the power, and those kept who could. There were exceptions, but exceptions were rare. Even at the Round Table there was only one Galahad.

Commines did not differ greatly from his age, or he would have been no fit minister for Louis. A tool is no longer a tool if it is not obedient to the hand which guides it. Let it fail in the work set it to do and it is cast aside into forgottenness or broken up as waste. He had no liking, he had even a loathing, for the part allotted to him, and he played it unwillingly; left to himself, he would not have played it at all. Ursula de Vesc might have lived out her life in peace so far as he was concerned; but Ursula de Vesc stood in his master's path, and however distasteful it might be she must be swept aside, now that Saxe made it possible so to do, and yet hold a semblance of justice. Only through her could the Dauphin be reached, therefore Commines steeled his nerves.

But to Stephen, partly for his own sake, and yet more for the memory of the dear dead woman, his heart went out in a greater tenderness than that of cold sympathy. Human love in the individual has been the salt which has kept the body politic from utter rottenness. How to soften the blow to Stephen was his thought as he paced slowly through the cool darkness of the night: how to do more than that, how to link Stephen to his own fortunes, which would surely rise after the successful execution of this commission of tragedy. Slowly he paced into the darkness, turned, and paced as slowly back again, to find Stephen standing motionless where he had left him, his hands linked behind his back, his shoulders squared, his face very sternly set.

"And if Jean Saxe's lies cannot be disproved? What follows then?"

"Stephen, we must save her together." He paused, but La Mothe made no reply. What could he answer? To continue protesting her innocence with nothing but his own word and hers to back the assertion was but beating the air; to ask, How shall we save her? would, he thought, tacitly admit her guilt. So there was silence until Commines went on slowly and with an evident difficulty; he would need all his diplomacy, he realized, all his powers of sophistry and persuasion if he was to carry Stephen La Mothe with him along the path he proposed to follow.

"Let us face facts," he began, almost roughly. "Saxe will leave me no alternative. No! say nothing, I know it all beforehand, and with all my soul I wish this had not fallen to my lot. And yet, Stephen, it is better I should be here than Tristan; Tristan has a rough way with women. Poor lad, that hurts you, does it? Yes, I am better than Tristan, even though Saxe leaves me no alternative. But we shall save her together," and this time Stephen La Mothe, out of the horror of the thought of Ursula de Vesc given over to the mercies of such a man as Tristan, found it in his heart to ask, "How?" The answer came promptly, but with grave deliberation.

"By the King's mercy."

"What mercy had the King on Molembrais? Will he be more merciful to a woman?"

"Then by his gratitude. Stephen, for her sake we must win the King's gratitude together."

"I do not understand."

"Behind the girl, but joined with her, stands——"

"The Dauphin? My God, Uncle, not that way."

La Mothe's voice was strange even to his own ears, so harsh and dry was it, the voice of age rather than of youth, and, indeed, he felt as if in this last hour he had suddenly grown so old that the world was a weariness.

"There were three in this plot," answered Commines, unmoved from his slow gravity, "Hugues, the Dauphin, and Mademoiselle de Vesc. Hugues is dead, but two still remain."

"His own son, his own, his one son? No, no, it cannot be, it cannot."

"I grant that it is incredible, but Saxe leaves no loophole for doubt."

"I do not mean that. I meant it could not be that the King—I cannot say it; his one son."

"He has no son but France. Do you remember what I told you that night in my room? Better the one should suffer than the many. And now there is a double reason, a double incentive to us both. Mademoiselle de Vesc's life hangs upon it. Follow the chain of reasoning, and, for God's sake, Stephen, follow closely. There is more than the life of a girl in all this. Jean Saxe cannot be suppressed even if we dared attempt it; Francois Villon, the King's jackal, who holds his life by a thread, knows everything. Of all men he dares not keep silence, of all men he would not keep silence if he dared, scum that he is. Within two days the King will know all Saxe's accusations, and if we do not act for ourselves another—Tristan or another—will come in our place. We will have destroyed ourselves for nothing, and there will be no hope for the girl, none. Can you not guess Tristan's methods with women? But, Stephen, if we act, if we return to Valmy and say, 'Sire, we have done our duty to the nation, with heavy hearts and in bitter sorrow we have done it: even though we have laid love itself on the altar of sacrifice, we have done it, give us this one life in return'—can the King refuse? Remember, if it is not we it will be another, and if we have no claim to ask, there will be no life given. Nor can we have any claim but obedience. I see no other way, no other hope."

The touch upon his arm was half appeal, half admonition, wholly friendly, but La Mothe winced as he shrank from it. There are times when human sympathy is the very salvation of the reason and the one comfort possible to the bruised spirit, but now the solitary instinct of the sick animal was upon him and he longed to be alone. Some sorrows are so personal they cannot be shared. Nor was it all sorrow. There was the passion of a fierce resentment, the bitter protest of helpless nature against a wanton and callous outrage.

As plainly as if Commines had said it in so many words he understood that, sinless or sinning, Ursula de Vesc was to be sacrificed to some state advantage; he understood, too, that neither Commines nor the King cared greatly whether she was innocent or guilty, and that but for his sake Commines would have given her hardly a second thought. Saxe lies! What matter? The state must progress. Saxe lies! What matter? Better one suffer than the many. Saxe lies! What matter? We will save her together by the one way possible.

Did he remember that first night in Amboise? Had he ever forgotten? Even in his plays of make-believe had he ever forgotten? The mind has a way of laying aside the unpalatable in some pigeon-hole of memory; it is out of sight, not forgotten. Yes, he remembered. Then it had been obedience to the King, service to the man to whom he owed everything and a duty to France. Now, more tremendous than all, Ursula de Vesc's life was thrown suddenly into the scale. That was Commines' plain statement. Nor was he conscious of any resentment against Commines. If Jean Saxe held to his story Commines could have no alternative, and if not Commines, it would be another, another less kindly.

No? His rebellion, the bitter upheaval of spirit, was against the conspiracy of iron circumstances which hedged him round on every side, a rebellion such as a man might feel who finds himself in silent darkness bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, while his brain is still quick and every nerve quivering with the passionate desire for life. "I see no hope," said Commines, "no hope but the one way," and Stephen La Mothe knew that one way was murder. Abruptly he turned upon his heel.

"The half-hour must be almost up," he said; "let us go to her."