His enemy arrived hot foot, and
entered to me with a mien so much lowered by anxiety and trouble
that I hardly knew him for the man who had a hundred times
rebuffed me, and whom the King's offers had found consistently
obdurate. All I had ever known of M. de Clan heightened his
present humility and strengthened his appeal; so that I felt pity
for him proportioned not only to his age and necessity, but to
the depth of his fall. Saintonge had rightly anticipated his
request; the first, he said, with a trace of his old pride, that
he had made to the King in eleven years: his son, his only son
and only child--the single heir of his name! He stopped there
and looked at me; his eyes bright, his lips trembling and moving
without sound, his hands fumbling on his knees.
"But," I said, "your son wishes to fight, M. de Clan?"
He nodded.
"And you cannot hinder him?"
He shrugged his shoulders grimly. "No," he said; "he is a St.
Germain."
"Well, that is just my case," I answered. "You see this young
fellow St.
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