he added in a lower voice.

Detricand was moved. "I thank you for this honest courtesy. I had
almost misread your letter," he answered. "Now I will speak freely.
I had hoped to leave my bones in Brittany. It was my will to fight to
the last, with my doomed followers as you call them--comrades and lovers
of France I say. And it was their wish to die with me. Till this
afternoon I had no other purpose. Willing deaths ours, for I am
persuaded, for every one of us that dies, a hundred men will rise up
again and take revenge upon this red debauch of government!"

"Have a care," said Grandjon-Larisse with sudden anger, his hand dropping
upon the handle of his sword.

"I ask leave for plain beliefs as you asked leave for plain words. I
must speak my mind, and I will say now that it has changed in this matter
of fighting and surrender. I will tell you what has changed it," and
Detricand drew from his pocket Lorenzo Dow's journal. "It concerns both
you and me."

Grandjon-Larisse flashed a look of inquiry at him. "It concerns your
cousin the Comtesse Chantavoine and Philip d'Avranche, who calls himself
her husband and Duc de Bercy."

He opened the journal, and handed it to Grandjon-Larisse. "Read," he
said.

As Grandjon-Larisse read, an oath broke from him. "Is this authentic,
monseigneur?" he said in blank astonishment "and the woman still lives?"