his troubled soul.
"And in any case I shall return to Valmy; my word is passed."

Again Commines let the sarcasm levelled at the King's justice pass
unchallenged: it is never wise to block a safety-valve when a high
pressure, whether of steam or of passion, is blowing itself off.

"These things being granted," he went on, "what course is the King to
follow? Is he to pardon the crime against the nation? for that is what
it is; is he to pass it over in silence and leave the criminal free to
weave a second and perhaps successful conspiracy? The King dare not:
for the nation's sake he dare not. What then? Is he to arrest and try
the prince by solemn course of law? I doubt if the Dauphin of France
is not above the common law of France, but apart from that again the
King dare not. France would be rent from end to end, and her enemies,
England, Spain, Burgundy, would swoop upon her and lay her waste, as in
the days before the coming of The Maid. I say again, the King dare
not. What course is left? Nothing but the arm of justice, that
justice which is Almighty God's, striking in secret, and so France is
saved."

He ended, but La Mothe returned no answer. Not that he was convinced,
no, not by a hairbreadth. But the sophism, and he knew it to be a
sophism, was too subtle for him, and his safest refuge was silence.
And yet his inability to tear the sophism to tatters was not the sole
cause of the silence. Commines' last question, What is left? though a
mere flourish of rhetoric, had stirred another possible reply.
Reconcilement was left, the union of father and son in love was left.
Inexorable logic as voiced by Commines, if it was logic at all and not
a sophism, might coerce the King to a terrible justice, but would the
father's love not welcome the reconcilement of a son's penitence as a
way of escape from the ultimate horror of the logic? And surely that
love must be a very tender, very yearning, very forgiving love when
even in the midst of just anger it could bend to such gentle thoughts
as lay hidden in those gifts through the hand of a stranger. Surely,
surely, surely. And so La Mothe kept silence.

"There may be no plot: there is no plot," he said at last, though in
the face of Commines' assertion he had little hope he was right; then
he added, "and what of Mademoiselle de Vesc?"

"The greater includes the less," replied Commines shortly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If the King may not spare his