"no, no; I am too hot. We can lose them; tell Serigny they were never found; tell him Yvard carried them off; tell him he never had them. We can fix a tale."
"It would be a long story, and a liar must needs have a good memory."
I was playing for time, time to think, time to get away.
"But I will go with you to Serigny," he insisted, "tell the lie and make him to believe. 'Pshaw, man, you know not the ways of the world, at least not at the Court of France."
"Think, Jerome, of the war, of our people in the colonies, of our honour?"
"I care not for it all," the wild passion in his voice made me almost fear him. "All that is as nothing to me where Celeste is concerned. Oh, Placide, think of it! I love her, love her, love her—do you comprehend what that means to such a man as I? I, who have loved her almost from her birth, have seen her taken from me and sold—yes, sold by her money-loving father, sold, sold! I, who have borne all her husband's leers when, flushed with the insolence of rank and wine, this shrivelled bridegroom bore her as a piece of ornament to his house in Paris. Can I bear to lose her now?
"But, Jerome, you would not be such a coward as to permit our brethren in the colonies to be slaughtered, while you tell your pitiful lie to shield a woman? It can not be done. What a fool you are come to be. Man, man, where is your courage?"
