Again there was shouting, but it ended quickly lest a word of the Duke's should be lost.
"Had Count Felix been a just and honorable man, had he been loved by you, I should never have claimed this throne as I did, and if I had, I should never have succeeded in mounting it. I should have been cut down on the steps of it as a traitor."
A voice said "No," but there was silence, a hanging upon the Duke's words.
"My claim was not so strong that it could have stood against Count Felix's had he been a just man. Much less would it have stood had young Count Maurice, Duke Robert's son, son of the man you, or your fathers, had claimed as Duke, been alive."
"Maurice is dead," some one shouted.
"I knew more about Count Felix than you did. I told you something of what I knew that night. I loved this country, and I took the throne to save it from such a Duke as Felix."
"Now wear the iron crown in St. Etienne," came the cry, and once more the shouts rang to the rafters.
"But I did not tell you all I knew of Count Felix," Herrick continued. "He plotted to have his cousin assassinated on his way from Passey; he brought a disfigured body, and buried it here in St. Etienne, but it was not his cousin's, and he knew it. As you know, I fought in the young Count's defence. He and I struck good blows side by side. He was wounded, his horse shot from under him, and I caught him up onto my own. Thus I rode through the forest, escaping those who pursued us. Then, as I kneeled to dress his wounds by a stream, a band of real robbers fell upon us. Me they bound to a tree, where I was afterward found by Mademoiselle de Liancourt and Captain Lemasle; him they recognized, and sold to his enemies—your enemies—those we have fought with on the frontier. I knew not then whether he was dead or alive. I did not know then where he was. I only knew that the body Felix had buried was not his. I only knew that nothing stood in the way of Felix mounting this throne, so I took it. Dare I at that time cast a single doubt upon my right by saying that after all the young Count might be alive?"
Herrick paused, but none answered him.
"But one of my first cares was to find out his fate for certain," he went on, "and from a hag in the forest I heard what had happened to him, learned that he was in a tower by Larne. Some of you know how we attacked that tower and released a prisoner. Few knew that it was the young Count Maurice. He is alive. He is here."