"Well done, our champion! I will finish your work"; and rushing at the prostrate man, over whom the seconds were bending, he pushed them aside, and was on the point of driving the weapon into his body.

Lecour threw himself forward and struck up the steel with his own.

"Coward!" he shouted, preparing for further defence of his late antagonist, while the astonishment of Grancey and his fellow-second at the apparition held them momentarily helpless.

"I am no coward, but the Instrument of Vengeance. His blood has slain mine. The scales of heaven are nice to a hair. Let me kill him!" and the stranger's sword glittered again in a sudden movement. But this time Grancey seized him, and his colleague a.s.sisted in overcoming the man's struggles.

"It is a madman," said the surgeon, his hands occupied with his bandages; "keep him safe till I can finish this work."

"A madman, yes!" shouted Philibert; "and who made me mad? It was one of this man's race of murderers and traitors. Justice will only sleep when he too dies by the sword, like my father, whom they slew. Let me strike!

let me kill him! or, if you will not let me kill him, I will depart, for the hour of Justice it seems is not yet."

"Depart quickly then," sternly said the surgeon, taking advantage of the turn in his mood, and at the words the seconds released the maniac.

Philibert ran again into the woods and disappeared.

"There is too much loss of blood--too much," the surgeon remarked gravely.

Lecour, wondering and agitated, divined, while the others were occupied, the ident.i.ty of the visitant.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE LETTRE DE CACHET

Lecour had succeeded for a time in baffling the forces arrayed against him.

The next turn was made by de Lotbiniere, who entered in his journal his intention of now speaking to the following persons, in their order--

The Minister, Repentigny, The Chevalier de Villerai, Vaudreuil, The Genealogist of France, The Prince de Poix, The Marechale de Noailles, The Baroness de la Roche Vernay.

He went to the first on the list and obtained an interview in private with his chief secretary, from which he issued with a large sealed envelope, which contained a handsome parchment in blank, signed "Louis."

It was a _lettre de cachet_, one of those warrants by which a man might, without warning to his friends or any charge laid, be arrested and imprisoned in one of those fortresses whose walls were so many living graves. He took it to the lodgings of Repentigny.

"Pierre, I am on the campaign against your namesake!" exclaimed he.

"Then you have heard the latest news?"

"Not if it is fresh to-day."

"An hour old. There has been a second duel between our Louis and Lecour.

What a pity!"

"A pity? it is an infernal outrage! Another duel? Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Lecour became impatient----"

"_Impatient_, forsooth!"

"And exclaimed among his companions that _Lery_----"

"Curse his insolence!"

"That _Lery's_ family were skin-merchants."

"The pig and scoundrel! he shall sting for this. Why do you hold yourself so calm, Repentigny, when your family is insulted?"

"Frankly, because it is not altogether untrue."

"_We_ in trade? Our n.o.bles skin-merchants? Is it thus that you will allow the King's permission to our order to engage in the fur trade to be stigmatised?"

"I have, Michel, seen the ways of many peoples. I have learned to look on the castes of our Canada with the same eyes as I look on those of India, the eyes of amus.e.m.e.nt, for I find in mankind everywhere the same tendencies and the same pretensions."

"But this beast of a Lecour is a liar and impostor."

"Both."

"Then I will show you your duty. Open this envelope. You have only to fill Lecour's name into the warrant it contains, and he goes under lock and key in the Bastille."

"I cannot."

"Why?"

"He is a brave man."

"Tut, you madden me, Pierre. The worst felons are bold."

"But not generous. Lecour saved Louis's life from the blade of a madman at this duel. I know too well how that madman would have thrust. We are both mad--he and I, pursuer and pursued--I have brought it down on both.

Poor Louis! have I pulled down the wrath of G.o.d also upon you? What is this, Michel, that you have brought? Consider what you ask me to do? To think that any man of our free colony would use a _lettre de cachet_, and against a brother Canadian! The thing is d.a.m.nable," and he flung the parchment into the fire, where it curled up instantly as if sensitive to the flame, and cracked loudly with bursting blisters.

"Pierre, you are a cursed fool!" de Lotbiniere retorted violently, and left, while Repentigny's face became clouded with an unspeakable torture of sadness.

The Chevalier de Villerai, who was next on de Lotbiniere's list, was one of the quartermasters of Louis' company, and de Lotbiniere, to see him, would have had to journey to Chalons, some fifty miles away. Being a relative, he instead wrote him. He received a reply, enclosing one from de Lery, who was lying ill of his wound. From the embittered sentences of his nephew, de Lotbiniere learned of the insistence of his comrades on his sending Lecour the challenge, and of the result to de Lery's right arm. Louis vowed that he would more willingly seek him the next time, and that the fight would be at sight without any formalities. He told nothing of Lecour's act of mercy, of which he was apparently uninformed.

The quartermaster was an easy-going, large-framed man who regarded most things as an occasion for drinking and joking. He willingly undertook to a.s.sist de Lotbiniere to act for the de Lery party among the Guardsmen, and to take charge of any pet.i.tions which might need to be presented to a military court. He protested good-humouredly, however, that "he was a _sabreur_, not an advocate." De Lotbiniere, having made these arrangements, went to Versailles and saw the Count de Vaudreuil.

The Count blandly alleged himself "ready to oblige Monsieur de Lotbiniere in any manner in his power."

The Genealogist of France was much interested in the Marquis's story, and certified in writing that the family name of the Repentignys was not Lecour, but Le Gardeur.

The Marquis now went to the Prince. He asked for a private audience and was admitted. Though Poix had not the remotest idea in the world who he was, yet he received him with obliging courtesy, combined with a certain customary hauteur.

"'Lecour,' you say, Monsieur? Is that the name?"

"Yes, Prince," the Marquis returned.