fixed upon me the most piteous look. '_Mon ami_,' she said, 'you are
disturbed, you are not in possession of yourself; this cannot be what
you mean.'

'Let me not see thee here again!' I cried. 'Would you make me mad in
the midst of my trouble? No! I will not have you look that way. Go home!
go home!' Then I took her into my arms and wept, though I am not a man
given to tears. 'Oh! my Agnès,' I said, 'give me thy counsel. What you
tell me I will do; but rather than risk thee, I would live thus for
ever, and defy them.'

She put her hand upon my lips. 'I will not ask this again,' she said,
bowing her head; 'but defy them--why should you defy them? Have they
come for nothing? Was Semur a city of the saints? They have come to
convert our people, Martin--thee too, and the rest. If you will submit
your hearts, they will open the gates, they will go back to their sacred
homes and we to ours. This has been borne in upon me sleeping and
waking; and it seemed to me that if I could but go, and say, "Oh! my
fathers, oh! my brothers, they submit," all would be well. For I do not
fear them, Martin. Would they harm me that love us? I would but give
our Marie one kiss----'

'You are a traitor!' I said. 'You would steal yourself from me, and do
me the worst wrong of all----'

But I recovered my calm. What she said reached my understanding at last.
'Submit!' I said, 'but to what? To come and turn us from our homes, to
wrap our town in darkness, to banish our wives and our children, to
leave us here to be scorched by the sun and drenched by the rain,--this
is not to convince us, my Agnès. And to what then do you bid us