May I, as a favour to myself, beg you, sire, to permit us also to hear it ?' 'What ?' Marshal Retz exclaimed angrily, 'are we to be the judges, then, or his Majesty?
Arnidieu!' he continued hotly, 'what, in the fiend's name, have we to do with it?
I protest 'fore Heaven--' 'Ay, sir, and what do you protest ?' my champion retorted, turning to him with stern disdain.
'Silence!' cried the king who had listened almost bewildered.

'Silence! By God, gentlemen,' he continued, his eye travelling round the circle with a sparkle of royal anger in it not unworthy of his crown, 'you forget yourselves.

I will have none of this quarrelling in my presence or out of it.

I lost Quelus and Maugiron that way, and loss enough, and I will have none of it, I say! M.de Bruhl,' he added, standing erect, and looking for the moment, with all his paint and frippery, a king, 'M.
de Bruhl, repeat your story.' The feelings with which I listened to this controversy may be imagined.
Devoured in turn by hope and fear as now one side and now the other seemed likely to prevail, I confronted at one moment the gloom of the dungeon, and at another tasted the air of freedom, which had never seemed so sweet before.

Strong as these feelings were, however, they gave way to curiosity at this point; when I heard Bruhl called, and saw him come forward at the king's command.