On the third day, when the Congress would give its decision, Detricand
brought the Chevalier to the palace. At the opening of the sitting he
requested that Damour be examined again. The Count was asked what
question had been put to Philip immediately before the deeds of
inheritance were signed. It was useless for Damour to evade the point,
for there were other officers of the duchy present who could have told
the truth. Yet this truth, of itself, need not ruin Philip. It was no
phenomenon for a prince to have one wife unknown, and, coming to the
throne, to take to himself another more exalted.

Detricand was hoping that the nice legal sense of mine and thine should
be suddenly weighted in his favour by a prepared tour de force. The
sympathies of the Congress were largely with himself, for he was of the
order of the nobility, and Philip's descent must be traced through
centuries of yeoman blood; yet there was the deliberate adoption by the
Duke to face, with the formal assent of the States of Bercy, but little
lessened in value by the fact that the French Government had sent its
emissaries to Bercy to protest against it. The Court had come to a point
where decision upon the exact legal merits of the case was difficult.

After Damour had testified to the question the Duke asked Philip when
signing the deeds at Bercy, Detricand begged leave to introduce another
witness, and brought in the Chevalier. Now he made his great appeal.
Simply, powerfully, he told the story of Philip's secret marriage with
Guida, and of all that came after, up to the scene in the Cohue Royale
when the marriage was proved and the child given back to Guida; when the
Countess Chantavoine, turning from Philip, acknowledged to Guida the
justice of her claim. He drove home the truth with bare unvarnished
power--the wrong to Guida, the wrong to the Countess, the wrong to the
Dukedom of Bercy, to that honour which should belong to those in high