I had never seen him, but the girl at the inn told
me who he was.
"When I fell on my knees, and told him how incapable my father was of
harm or disloyalty, he at first showed annoyance, and said that my
pleading would be useless. My father must be treated as an example, he
said. To succor traitors was treason, to shield heretics was heresy, and
there was no doubt that the judges would condemn him to death, to furnish
others a lesson. He was then going to leave me, but his secretary came
forward and said that I had come at an opportune moment, an instrument
sent by Heaven. Was I not, he asked the governor, some one who had much
to gain or much to lose? Then La Chatre became joyful, and said that
there was a way--one only--by which I might free my father. Eagerly I
begged to know that way, but with horror I refused it when I learned that
it was to--to hunt down a certain Huguenot captain, to make him trust me,
and to betray him. For a time I would not hear his persuasions. Then he
swore that, if I did not undertake this detestable mission, my father
should surely die; and he told me that you were a deserter, a traitor, an
enemy to the church and to the King, I had heard your name but once or
twice, and I remembered it only as one who had worked with daring and
secrecy in the interests of the Huguenots. He described my father
tortured and killed, his body hanging at the gates of Fleurier, blown by
the wind, and attacked by the birds.
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