“If, by confessing your own guilt, you could save your father, I should tell you to deliver yourself up, and to confess the whole truth.  Such would be your duty.  But this sacrifice would be not only useless, but dangerous.  Your confession of guilt would only implicate your father still more.  You would be arrested, but they would not release him, and you would both be tried and convicted.  Let us, then, allow—­I will not say justice, for that would be blasphemy—­but these blood-thirsty men, who call themselves judges, to pursue their course, and attribute all that you have done to your father.  When the trial comes, you will prove his innocence, and produce alibis so incontestable, that they will be forced to acquit him.  And I understand the people of our country so well, that I am sure not one of them will reveal our stratagem.”

“And if we should not succeed,” asked Maurice, gloomily, “what could I do then?”

The question was so terrible that the priest dared not respond to it.  He and Maurice were silent during the remainder of the drive.

They reached the city at last, and Maurice saw how wise the abbe had been in preventing him from assuming a disguise.

Armed with the most absolute power, the Duc de Sairmeuse and the Marquis de Courtornieu had closed all the gates of Montaignac save one.

Through this gate all who desired to leave or enter the city were obliged to pass, and two officers were stationed there to examine all comers and goers, to question them, and to take their name and residence.

At the name “d’Escorval,” the two officers evinced such surprise that Maurice noticed it at once.

“Ah! you know what has become of my father!” he exclaimed.

“The Baron d’Escorval is a prisoner, Monsieur,” replied one of the officers.

Although Maurice had expected this response, he turned pale.

“Is he wounded?” he asked, eagerly.

“He has not a scratch.  But enter, sir, and pass on.”

From the anxious looks of these officers one might have supposed that they feared they should compromise themselves by conversing with the son of so great a criminal.

The carriage rolled beneath the gate-way; but it had not traversed two hundred yards of the Grand Rue before the abbe and Maurice had remarked several posters and notices affixed to the walls.

“We must see what this is,” they said, in a breath.

They stopped near one of these notices, before which a reader had already stationed himself; they descended from the carriage, and read the following order: 

“article I.—­The inmates of the house in which the elder Lacheneur shall be found will be handed over to a military commission for trial.

“article II.—­Whoever shall deliver the body of the elder Lacheneur, dead or alive, will receive a reward of twenty thousand francs.”

This was signed Duc de Sairmeuse.