“Mine!—since he is a soldier of France; yours, too, by that title. I am come here, from Algiers, to speak the truth in his name, and to save him for his own honor and the honor of my Empire. See here! At noon, I have this paper, sent by a swift pigeon. Read it! You see how he is to die, and why. Well, by my Cross, by my Flag, by my France, I swear that not a hair of his head shall be touched, and not a drop of blood in his veins shall be shed!”
He looked at her, astonished at the grandeur and the courage which could come on this child of razzias and revelries, and give to her all the splendor of a fearless command of some young empress. But his face darkened and set sternly as he read the paper; it was the greatest crime in the sight of a proud soldier, this crime against discipline, of the man for whom she pleaded.
“You speak madly,” he said, with cold brevity. “The offense merits the chastisement. I shall not attempt to interfere.”
“Wait! You will hear, at least, Monsieur?”
“I will hear you—yes, but I tell you, once for all, I never change sentences that are pronounced by councils of war; and this crime is the last for which you should attempt to plead for mercy with me.”
“Hear me, at least!” she cried, with passionate ferocity—the ferocity of a dumb animal wounded by a shot. “You do not know what this man is—how he has had to endure; I do. I have watched him; I have seen the brutal tyranny of his chief, who hated him because the soldiers loved him. I have seen his patience, his obedience, his long-suffering beneath insults that would have driven any other to revolt and murder. I have seen him—I have told you how—at Zaraila, thinking never of death or life, only of our Flag, that he has made his own, and under which he has been forced to lead the life of a galley slave—”
“The finer soldier he be, the less pardonable his offense.”
“That I deny! If he were a dolt, a brute, a thing of wood as many are, he would have no right to vengeance; as it is, he is a gentleman, a hero, a martyr; may he not forget for one hour that he is a slave? Look you! I have seen him so tried that I told him—I, who love my army better than any living thing under the sun—that I would forgive him if he forgot duty and dealt with his tyrant as man to man. And he always held his soul in patience. Why? Not because he feared death—he desired it; but because he loved his comrades, and suffered in peace and in silence lest, through him, they should be led into evil——”
His eyes softened as he heard her; but the inflexibility of his voice never altered.
“It is useless to argue with me,” he said briefly; “I never change a sentence.”
“But I say that you shall!” As the audacious words were flung forth, she looked him full in the eyes, while her voice rang with its old imperious oratory. “You are a great chief; you are as a monarch here; you hold the gifts and the grandeur of the Empire; but, because of that—because you are as France in my eyes—I swear, by the name of France, that you shall see justice done to him; after death, if you cannot in life. Do you know who he is—this man whom his comrades will shoot down at sunrise as they shoot down the murderer and the ravisher in their crimes?”