I had not gone two hundred paces along the path before I heard the tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to hide myself before Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her horse gracefully, and with all the courage of a northern woman. I watched her pass, and then, assured by her presence that I was in the right road, I hurried after her. Two minutes' walking at speed brought me to a light wooden bridge spanning a stream. I crossed this, and, the wood opening, saw before me first a wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round balconies that men loved and built in the days of the first Francis.
It was of good size, but wore, I fancied, a gloomy aspect. A great yew hedge, which seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the ground floor of the east wing from view, while a formal rose garden, stiff even in neglect, lay in front of the main building. The west wing, whose lower roofs fell gradually away to the woods, probably contained the stables and granaries.
I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road reached the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I turned and hastened back. Fortunately, I met no one between the house and the village, and was able to enter the inn with an air of the most complete innocence.
Short as had been my absence, I found things altered there. Round the door loitered and chattered three strangers--stout, well-armed fellows, whose bearing suggested a curious mixture of smugness and independence. Half-a-dozen pack-horses stood tethered to the post in front of the house; and the landlord's manner, from being rude and churlish only, had grown perplexed and almost timid. One of the strangers, I soon found, supplied him with wine; the others were travelling merchants, who rode in the first one's company for the sake of safety. All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses; and I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might leak out before them, and particularly that I might refer to the previous night's disturbance, was on tenterhooks while they remained.
For a time this did not suggest anything to me. But when we had all taken our seats for supper there came an addition to the party. The door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night before with Madame de Cocheforêt entered, and took a stool by the fire. I felt sure that he was one of the servants at the Château; and in a flash his presence inspired me with the most feasible plan for obtaining admission which I had yet hit upon. I felt myself growing hot at the thought--it seemed so full of promise and of danger--and on the instant, without giving myself time to think too much, I began to carry it into effect.
I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, assuming a jovial air, passed it round the table. When we had drunk a few glasses, I fell to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side of the Languedoc party and the malcontents, in so reckless a fashion that the innkeeper was beside himself at my imprudence. The merchants, who belonged to the class with whom the Cardinal was always most popular, looked first astonished and then enraged. But I was not to be checked. Hints and sour looks were lost upon me. I grew more outspoken with every glass, I drank to the Rochellois, I swore it would not be long before they raised their heads again; and at last, while the innkeeper and his wife were engaged lighting the lamp, I passed round the bottle and called on all for a toast.
"I'll give you one to begin," I bragged noisily. "A gentleman's toast! A southern toast! Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and a health to all who hate him!"
"Mon Dieu!" one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat in a rage. "I am not going to stomach that! Is your house a common treason-hole," he continued, turning furiously on the landlord, "that you suffer this?"
"Hoity-toity!" I answered, coolly keeping my seat. "What is all this? Don't you relish my toast, little man?"
"No--nor you!" he retorted hotly, "whoever you may be!"
"Then I will give you another," I answered, with a hiccough. "Perhaps it will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of Orleans, and may he soon be King!"
CHAPTER III.
THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD.
MY words fairly startled the three men out of their anger. For a moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then the wine-merchant clapped his hand on the table. "That is enough!" he said, with a look at his companions. "I think there can be no mistake about that. As damnable treason as ever I heard whispered! I congratulate you, Sir, on your boldness. As for you," he continued, turning with an ugly sneer to the landlord, "I shall know now the company you keep! I was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a tune!"
But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many words, he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished. In a twinkling he raised such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a roar like a bull's he ran headlong at the table, and overturned it on the top of me. The woman saved the lamp and fled with it into a corner, whence she and the man from the Château watched the skirmish in silence; but the pewter cups and platters flew spinning across the floor, while the table pinned me to the ground among the ruins of my stool. Having me at this disadvantage--for at first I made no resistance--the landlord began to belabour me with the first thing he snatched up, and when I tried to defend myself cursed me with each blow for a treacherous rogue and a vagrant. Meanwhile, the three merchants, delighted with the turn things had taken, skipped round us laughing; and now hounded him on, now bantered me with "How is that for the Duke of Orleans?" and "How now, traitor?"
When I thought this had lasted long enough--or, to speak more plainly, when I could stand the innkeeper's drubbing no longer--I threw him off by a great effort, and struggled to my feet. But still, though the blood was trickling down my face, I refrained from drawing my sword. I caught up instead a leg of the stool which lay handy, and, watching my opportunity, dealt the landlord a shrewd blow under the ear, which laid him out in a moment on the wreck of his own table.
"Now!" I cried, brandishing my new weapon, which fitted the hand to a nicety, "come on! Come on, if you dare to strike a blow, you peddling, truckling, huckstering knaves! A fig for you and your shaveling Cardinal!"
The red-faced wine-merchant drew his sword in a one-two. "Why, you drunken fool," he said wrathfully, "put that stick down, or I will spit you like a lark!"
"Lark in your teeth!" I cried, staggering as if the wine were in my head. "Another word, and I--"
He made a couple of savage passes at me, but in a twinkling his sword flew across the room.
"Voilà!" I shouted, lurching forward, as if I had luck and not skill to thank for it. "Now the next! Come on, come on--you white-livered knaves!" And, pretending a drunken frenzy, I flung my weapon bodily amongst them, and seizing the nearest, began to wrestle with him.
In a moment they all threw themselves upon me, and, swearing copiously, bore me back to the door. The wine-merchant cried breathlessly to the woman to open it, and in a twinkling they had me through it and half way across the road. The one thing I feared was a knife-thrust in the mêlée; but I had to run that risk, and the men were honest enough and, thinking me drunk, indulgent. In a trice I found myself on my back in the dirt, with my head humming; and heard the bars of the door fall noisily into their places.
I got up and went to the door, and, to play out my part, hammered on it frantically, crying out to them to let me in. But the three travellers only jeered at me, and the landlord, coming to the window, with his head bleeding, shook his fist at me and cursed me for a mischief-maker.
Baffled