He paused--for want of breath mayhap--for, indeed, his rugged eloquence was carrying him away on the wings of his fervour and his burning patriotism. M. de Courson and Laurent de Mortain had listened to him in sullen silence. Once or twice Laurent had made an effort to interrupt, but de Maurel spoke very loudly and forcibly, and the other perforce had to remain silent. Once or twice he affected to smother a yawn, and he would have given much to be able to turn his back on this ranting demagogue--as he inwardly termed him--and to leave him to continue his ravings in solitude. But, in spite of himself, something held him back. There was a certain forcefulness, a certain directness as well as pride in Ronnay de Maurel's impassioned harangue which compelled attention, even if it did not call for respect. Laurent de Mortain--and M. le Comte de Courson also, for that matter--were soldiers and patriots, too. There was much in them which was every whit as fine and brave as the soul of de Maurel which was finding expression in his eloquent words. It was only the divergence of ideals which stood between these Royalists and the man who they considered had been a traitor to his caste.
There was the pity of it! The miserable, irretrievable pity! The children of France were at deadly enmity with one another; their different political aims had caused an abyss to form between them, which nothing now could bridge over. There was a total lack of understanding, and, alas! the many outrages perpetrated on both sides had rendered the breach for ever impassable. M. de Courson and Laurent de Mortain saw in de Maurel the product of the spirit of regicide, of the sanguinary revolution which had committed the most brutal excesses the civilized world had ever seen; and Ronnay de Maurel saw in his kinsmen only the incarnation of that spirit which had not been content to fight for the cause of its traditions, but had treacherously sold the country to the foreign foe, had brought foreign armies within the sacred boundaries of France, had sought the aid of foreigners to gain victory for its arms.
And these three men, in whom flowed the same blood of kinship, stood now confronting one another with something like deadly hatred flashing in their eyes. The two brothers, indeed, presented a strange contrast: Laurent, slender and graceful, with smoothly-dressed dark hair crowning a face full of charm and delicacy, with hands white and soft, with clothes that fitted his elegant young figure to perfection; and Ronnay de Maurel, tall and ungainly, in rough blouse and heavy boots, with rugged face bronzed by campaigning in all weathers and furrowed long before its time, with eyes of a deep blue, that appeared almost black beneath the straight, square brow and firm mouth set in hard, obstinate lines. Indeed, it was not six years that lay between them in age, but a whole century--a century of thoughtlessness, of easy-going tyranny, of selfishness on the one hand, and one of rebellion and self-will on the other, and there was a century of suffering and of wrongs to be avenged on either side.