Before the night came and ere that Commission had finished its labours
much more had to be done. Based upon such matter as had been extracted
from them in the numerous interrogatories to which they had all been
subjected since their arrest, each and every one had been examined by
the Court, while, with one exception--that of Van den Enden, who had
not been believed and who was reserved for something still worse than
examination, namely torture--what they had told or refused to tell was
considered sufficient for the purposes of the Judges. One of the
witnesses, however, had been spared the pain of testifying, since
Boisfleury's evidence was considered enough--that one being Humphrey
West.
"It is true," D'Aligre said to the others seated with him, "that he
overheard the plot discussed at Basle. But all that he heard is
nothing in comparison with what we now know to have taken place in
Brussels, in Normandy, and elsewhere. He has endured enough. We may
absolve him from further suffering."
"To which has to be added," remarked Laisné de la Marguerie, another
of the Judges, a bitter, sarcastic man, "the fact that the young man
stands high in the graces of his Majesty and is like to stand still
higher ere long."
"While," said Quintin de Richebourg, _maître de requêtes_, a kindly
hearted lawyer, "he was once a friend of, and befriended by, De
Beaurepaire. No need to force him to speak against one who, at least,
never harmed him."
Therefore, Humphrey was released from what would have been a hateful
task and left the Arsenal directly he was informed that such was the
case, while the Commission at once proceeded to examine the prisoners,
beginning with De Beaurepaire.
The answers to the questions put to him were, however, a total denial
of any knowledge of the plot. He had never, he said, dreamed of any
such conspiracy; he loved the King and always had loved him since they
were boys and playmates together. La Truaumont was his factotum and he
regretted his death, but while acknowledging that he had employed the
man in that capacity, he had never heard him breathe a word of any
such a scheme. Had such been the case he would have slain him at his
feet. With Van den Enden he had had little correspondence and that
only on the subject of raising private loans. No one had the slightest
right or justification to use his name in connection with any plot
against the King, and Van den Enden and La Truaumont had done so for
their own purposes, if they had done so at all.
"That they did so," La Reynie said, "is undoubted, since La Truaumont
met his death in endeavouring to slay those who went to arrest him on
account of his connection with this sinful plot for which you were
yourself arrested on the morning of the previous day." After which he
continued gravely: "It is strange that, if your Highness was unaware
of this plot, you should have been surrounded by so many persons of
Norman birth and extraction who were all interested in it. La
Truaumont was one of these persons."
"He was equally well known to me ten years ago and more when I first
gave him employment. Was the plot hatched so long ago as that?"
"The so-called Chevalier la Preaux is another; the man who is
sometimes known as Fleur de Mai."
"He was as much in the pay of La Truaumont as La Truaumont was in
mine. And he is of the _canaille_. I could have no intercourse with
him. Had I required a tool I should not have taken a dirty one."
"Dirty tools, or weapons, can be used as well as clean ones. And--in
conspiracies--the tools are never clean. But there is still another
Norman. The woman by your side, near you. She calls herself the
Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville. She is known to be deeply involved in
this vile plot. She was arrested in the lodge you had lent her and
which was in your possession as Grand Veneur. She went to Basle at
your bidding to meet Van den Enden on the subject of that plot. She is
your accomplice. Yet you learnt nothing of it from her. Surely that is
strange!"
"She is," De Beaurepaire said, while as he did so he turned towards
where Emérance sat separated from him by only a little space, and
looked her full in the face, "a woman whom I love. One whom, when we
escape from this accursed net you are endeavouring to fling around us,
I will love and cherish till my last hour."
"_Mon amour!_" Emérance breathed rather than murmured between her
parted lips.
And the man heard that breath, as perhaps did some of the judges
sitting near the prisoner.
"Yet," La Reynie said, "loving her thus, you tell us you know not of
what she was vowed to, namely the destruction of the King, of his
throne, of France. You did not know the secret of this woman whom you
love, the woman who, you think, loves you!"
"Think!" again whispered Emérance, her eyes on La Reynie now. "Think!"
While De Beaurepaire, speaking at the same time, used the same word.
"Think!" he said. "Think that she loves me! La Reynie, do you think
there is any man who does not know when a woman truly loves him? If
so, then it is you who have never loved or been loved."
As he spoke, D'Aligre shot a glance at Laisné de la Marguerie. "The
_riposte_ is deadly," the latter scrawled on a paper in front of him,
a paper which the President could see. For La Reynie's wife was a
shrew who was reported to have married him for anything rather than
love.
"You know who and what she is?" La Reynie continued savagely. "You
know her past?"
"No, only her present. Her past is nothing to me. I had no share in
it."
"You should have informed yourself of it ere you allowed yourself to
love her. You could have learnt that she was, with La Truaumont, the
heart and soul of this conspiracy. A woman ruined by extravagant
living and willing to make money by any means."
"'Tis false," Emérance exclaimed, looking up at the Judges for the
first time and also speaking aloud for the first time. "My husband
left me with some small means. But--because after treating me cruelly
for months, he was found dead in his bed, for which I was tried at
Rouen for having poisoned him and was at once acquitted and
absolved--not one sol or denier have I ever been able to obtain from
his kinsmen. Extravagant living! I have never yet known what it was to
have a handful of gold pistoles to spend, or fling into the river, if
it pleased me so to do."
"Madame," La Reynie said quietly, "this is not your final
interrogatory. Later I will deal with you."
After which he again addressed De Beaurepaire, saying: "Monsieur le
Prince, the man, Van den Enden, states that you have often said in his
presence, and that of others, when speaking of his Majesty the King:
'We shall have him yet. We shall hold him.'"
"He lies," De Beaurepaire said, shrugging his shoulders with superbly
assumed disdain. "As for the others, who are they and where are they?
Produce them."
"Also," La Reynie continued, ignoring this challenge, "he states that
you threatened to kill him if he did not act entirely as you bade
him."
"Pah!" exclaimed De Beaurepaire, with another contemptuous shrug
which, with the exclamation itself, spoke volumes. "If you choose to
believe such babble as this, uttered by such a creature as that, you
may do so," was what the shrug and the word conveyed.
"Do you deny, monsieur," La Reynie continued, "that you ever uttered
the expression, 'I would die content if I could once draw my sword
against the King in a strong revolution'?"
"When," exclaimed De Beaurepaire, "you can put me face to face with a
credible witness who can testify to having ever heard me utter any
such expression, I will answer you before him. But not till then."
"Madame," La Reynie said now to Emérance, while intimating by a look
towards the Prince that he had done with him, for the present at
least, "Madame, give me your attention. What is your relationship with
the last witness?"
"I love him," Emérance answered, lifting her eyes slowly towards her
questioner. "No more nor less than that."
"You misapprehend me. I mean as regards his, and your, participation
in this plot?"
"There was no plot," Emérance replied again, this time with a cynical
look upon her face; "or, at least, none against France or the King of
France. Yet, it is true, there was a plot."
"You admit that?" D'Aligre exclaimed, bending forward over his
cushions. "You admit it?"
As he asked the question he was not the only one in that Court who
turned their eyes on the unhappy woman. In solemn truth, there were no
eyes in that Court which did not rest on her now. The eyes of the
Judges and the Procureur-Général, as well as those of her fellow
prisoners.
"What is she about to say?" the man who loved her asked himself, while
knowing full well that whatever she might say would not be aught that
could harm him, though fearing at the same time that she might say
something which would sacrifice her while shielding him. "What story,
what scheme has she devised?"
"The she-cat, the tigress!" Van den Enden groaned inwardly. "She will
save him and herself--curse her!--by sacrificing me. Yet, how? How?"
But still there was another prisoner who heard those words--Fleur de
Mai. But he said nothing to himself and indulged in no speculation as
to what the woman might be about to state. He was doomed, he knew:
nothing could save him. There was for him but one hope left in this
world; the hope that since, vagabond as he was, he was the off-shoot
of an honourable family, he might perish by the axe and not the wheel,
or that still deeper degradation, the rope.
"You acknowledge that there was a plot?" La Reynie exclaimed, echoing
the President's question.
"I have said," Emérance replied. "Yet no plot against France or the
King."
"Explain."
"He," her eyes turned softly towards her lover and then re-turned
swiftly toward the Judges, "wanted money. His charges and expenses
were great, as you all know. No need to say more of that. As for
myself, I was poor, horribly, bitterly poor, almost at starvation's
door, for the reason I have but now told you. That one," her eyes
looking from underneath their lids at Van den Enden, "would do aught
for money; would betray, steal, murder for the money he always wanted.
La Truaumont--well! he is dead. Of him I will but say that he was
ambitious. He had been a good soldier yet, like many another soldier
as good as he, he had been forgotten, passed over, set aside. We all
wanted money. The others--that assassin, or would be assassin, there,"
looking at Fleur de Mai, "was but a hireling, a varlet, to any who
could pay him."
"It was my mind, mine alone," she continued, "which conceived the
plot. Mine," and Emérance smote her breast as she spoke, as though to
force conviction into the minds of those who heard her. "Mine! Spain
hates the King, France, you, I, all of us in whose veins French blood
runs--you well know why. So, too, does Holland, for baser, meaner
reasons; she hates us because she goes down before us as autumn leaves
go down before the storm. Because her Stadtholder, William, can do
naught against France. Therefore, since France could not be conquered,
defeated, humiliated in the field, other ways were thought of. Shot
and steel were useless. It remained to try gold."
That Emérance had aroused the interest of her audience, of the Judges,
she knew by now. She had touched that chord, which, as she was well
aware, never fails to respond in the hearts of her countrymen to the
praise of their country. She knew this, she saw it in their proud,
self-satisfied glances as she dwelt on the inferiority of Spain and
Holland before France. Only--she asked herself--would they believe?
Would this attempt, this last chance, enable the man she loved--of
herself she did not think!--to obtain earthly salvation.
"The scheme was tried," she continued. "Learning as I did through La
Truaumont that there was a large sum of Spanish money ready for those
who would betray France to them, I conceived the idea, not of
betraying, but of pretending to betray, France. I was, as I have been
termed, _une fine Normande_; the Normans were embittered against the
King for his treatment of the province. The instruments were ready to
my hand; the faggots were laid; the spark to ignite them alone was
needed. You know the rest, or almost know it. But some part you do not
know. His, De Beaurepaire's name was used without his knowledge, the
money was obtained from De Montérey, yet not one sol ever reached the
Prince's hands. We hoped that, when the enemies of France learnt that
we had tricked them, robbed them if you will, the plot would be
abandoned without De Beaurepaire ever knowing of the use we had made
of him."
"The love for him does not appear in this," sneered Laisné de la
Marguerie. "The Prince's name was used unrighteously, judging by your
own story, while even the money you say you received was not shared by
him."
"Where therefore did it go?" D'Aligre asked, grasping the point which
his more astute brother judge had made. "It was a large sum?"
"It went to Normandy if it ever came into France," Van den Enden
exclaimed, tottering to his feet in his desire to be listened to by
the Judges. "But it never came. Never. This woman, this adventuress,
has lied to save her lover and herself. There was no plot to either
overthrow France or hoodwink Spain and Holland. There was no money
whatever forthcoming.
"Nevertheless she was superb. _Splendide mendax!_" murmured Laisné de
la Marguerie. "Yet unavailing."
While, as he did so, La Reynie was heard addressing Van den Enden in
quiet, impressive tones.
"You forget," he said, "your interview with this woman in her rooms at
Basle. You forget that the young man whom you sought to have murdered
overheard your conversation with her and La Truaumont. The
conversation in which you stated that you had received a million
livres from the Comte de Montérey. Also you forget, or, perhaps, you
do not know, that that young man's interrogatory is here before us."
While, as the Procureur-Général spoke, he laid his hand on a packet of
papers lying amongst some others.