"What
will you! What is it?"
"I would take your place," La Tribe answered quietly.
"My place?"
"Yes."
"What, are we too many?"
"We are enough without you, M. Tignonville," the minister answered.
"These men, who have wrongs to avenge, God will justify them."
Tignonville's eyes sparkled with anger. "And have I no wrongs to
avenge?" he cried. "Is it nothing to lose my mistress, to be robbed of
my wife, to see the woman I love dragged off to be a slave and a toy? Are
these no wrongs?"
"He spared your life, if he did not save it," the minister said solemnly.
"And hers. And her servants."
"To suit himself."
La Tribe spread out his hands.
"To suit himself! And for that you wish him to go free?" Tignonville
cried in a voice half-choked with rage. "Do you know that this man, and
this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and when
even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people? After that
is he to go free?"
"At your hands," La Tribe answered quietly. "You alone of our people
must not pursue him." He would have added more, but Tignonville would
not listen.
Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let hatred
eat away his more generous instincts. Vain and conceited, he fancied
that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the wound in
his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the downfall of
his enemy.
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