“I have reflected.”

The Duke was making a violent effort to compose his ordinarily violent temper.

“Do you imagine,” answered he disdainfully, “that I shall be satisfied with an answer of this kind?  I hope that you will submit to my wishes, for I think that, as the head of the family, I have conceived a splendid plan for its future aggrandizement; and do you think that, for the mere whim of a boy, I will be turned aside from my fixed determination?”

“No, father,” answered Norbert, “it is no boyish whim that makes me oppose your wishes.  Tell me, have I not ever been a dutiful son to you?  Have I ever refused to do what I was ordered?  No; I have obeyed you implicitly.  I am the son of the wealthiest man in Poitiers, and I have lived like a laborer’s child.  Whatever your mandates were, I have never complained or murmured at them.”

“Well, and now I order you to marry Mademoiselle de Puymandour.”

“Anything but that; I do not love her, and I shall never do so.  Do you wish my whole life to be blighted?  I entreat you to spare me this sacrifice!”

“My orders are given, and you must comply with them.”

“No,” answered Norbert quietly, “I will not comply with them.”

A purple flush passed across the Duke’s face, then it faded away, leaving every feature of a livid whiteness.

“Great heavens!” said he in a voice before which Norbert, at one time, would have quailed.  “Whence comes the audacity that makes you venture to dispute my orders?”

“From the feeling that I am acting rightly.”

“How long is it that it has been right for children to disobey their parents’ commands?”

“Ever since parents began to issue unjust commands.”

This speech put the finishing stroke to the Duke’s rage.  He made a step across the room, towards his son, raising the stick that he usually carried high in the air.  For a moment he stood thus, and then, casting it aside, he exclaimed,—­

“No, I cannot strike a Champdoce.”

Perhaps it was Norbert’s intrepid attitude that restrained the Duke’s frenzy, for he had not moved a muscle, but stood still, with his arms folded, and his head thrown haughtily back.

“No, this is an act of disobedience that I will not put up with,” exclaimed the old man in a voice of thunder, and, springing upon his son, he grasped him by the collar and dragged him up to a room on the second floor, and thrust him violently through the doorway.

“You have twenty-four hours in which to reflect whether you will be willing to accept the wife that I have chosen for you,” said he.

“I have already decided on that point,” answered Norbert quietly.

The Duke made no reply, but slammed the door, which was of massive oak, and secured by a lock of enormous proportions.