The Chevalier detained Berenger for a moment to whisper, ’What I see is so noble a heart that I know you cannot sacrifice him to your punctilio.’

Philip was so angry with Berenger, so excited, and so determined to show that nothing ailed him, that for a short time he was roused, and seemed to be recovering; but in a few days he flagged again, only, if possible with more gruffness, moodiness, and pertinacity in not allowing that anything was amiss.  It was the bitterest drop of all in Berenger’s cup, when in the end of January he looked back at what Philip had been only a month before, and saw how he had wasted away and lost strength; the impulse rather to ruin himself that destroy his brother came with such force that he could scarcely escape it by his ever-recurring cry for help to withstand it.  And then Diane, in her splendid beauty and withchery, would rise before him, so that he knew how a relaxation of the lengthened weary effort would make his whole self break its bonds and go out to her.  Dreams of felicity and liberty, and not with Eustacie, would even come over him, and he would awaken to disappointment before he came to a sense of relief and thankfulness that he was still his own.  The dislike, distaste, and dread that came so easily in his time of pain and weakness were less easy to maintain in his full health and forced inactivity.  Occupation of mind and hope seemed the only chance of enabling either of the two to weather this most dreary desert period; and Berenger, setting his thoughts resolutely to consider what would be the best means of rousing Philip, decided at length that any endeavour to escape, however arduous and desperate, would be better than his present apathetic languor, even if it led to nothing.  After the first examination of their prison, Berenger had had no thought of escape; he was then still weak and unenterprising.  He had for many months lived in hopes of interference from home; and, besides, the likelihood that so English a party as his own would be quickly pursued and recaptured, where they did not know their road and had no passports, had deterred him lest should fall into still straiter imprisonment.  But he had since gained, in the course of his rides, and by observation from the top of the tower, a much fuller knowledge of the country.  He knew the way to the grange du Temple, and to the chief towns in the neighbourhood.  Philip and Humfrey had both lost something of their intensely national look and speech, and, moreover, was having broken out again, there was hope of falling in with Huguenot partisans even nearer that at La Rochelle.  But whether successful or not, some enterprise was absolutely needed to save Philip from his despondent apathy; and Berenger, who in these eighteen months had grown into the strength and vigour of manhood, felt as if he had force and power for almost any effort save this hopeless waiting.

He held council with Humfrey, who suggested that it might be well to examine the vaults below the keep.  He had a few days before, while going after some of the firewood stored below the ground-floor chamber, observed a door, locked, but with such rusty iron hinges that they might possibly yield to vigorous efforts with a stone; and who could tell where the underground passages might come out?