XVII

An immense change had taken place in me during the course of six years.

I had become a man very much like other men; my instincts had managed to

bring themselves into harmony with my affections, my intuitions with my

reason. This social education had been carried on quite naturally; all

I had to do was to accept the lessons of experience and the counsels of

friendship. I was far from being a learned man; but I had developed a

power of acquiring solid learning very rapidly. My notions of things in

general were as clear as could be obtained at that time. Since then I

know that real progress has been made in human knowledge; I have watched

it from afar and have never thought of denying it. And as I notice that

not all men of my age show themselves as reasonable, it pleases me to

think that I was put on a fairly right road early in life, since I have

never stopped in the blind alley of errors and prejudices.

The progress I had made intellectually seemed to satisfy Edmee.

“I am not astonished at it,” she said. “I could see it in your letters;

but I rejoice at it with a mother’s pride.”

My good uncle was no longer strong enough to engage in the old stormy

discussions; and I really think that if he had retained his strength

he would have been somewhat grieved to find that I was no longer the

indefatigable opponent who had formerly irritated him so persistently.

He even made a few attempts at contradiction to test me; but at this

time I should have considered it a crime to have gratified him. He

showed a little temper at this, and seemed to think that I treated him

too much as an old man. To console him I turned the conversation to the

history of the past, to the years through which he himself had lived,

and questioned him on many points wherein his experience served him

better than my knowledge. In this way I obtained many healthy notions

for the guidance of my own conduct, and at the same time I fully

satisfied his legitimate _amour propre_. He now conceived a friendship

for me from genuine sympathy, just as formerly he had adopted me from

natural generosity and family pride. He did not disguise from me that

his great desire, before falling into the sleep that knows no waking,

was to see me married to Edmee; and when I told him that this was the

one thought of my life, the one wish of my soul, he said:

“I know, I know. Everything depends on her, and I think she can no

longer have any reasons for hesitation. . . . At all events,” he added,

after a moment’s silence and with a touch of peevishness, “I cannot see

any that she could allege at present.”

From these words, the first he had ever uttered on the subject which

most interested me, I concluded that he himself had long been favourable

to my suit, and that the obstacle, if one still existed, lay with Edmee.

My uncle’s last remark implied a doubt which I dared not try to clear

up, and which caused me great uneasiness. Edmee’s sensitive pride

inspired me with such awe, her unspeakable goodness filled me with such

respect that I dared not ask her point-blank to decide my fate. I made

up my mind to act as if I entertained no other hope than that she would

always let me be her brother and friend.

An event which long remained inexplicable afforded some distraction

to my thoughts for a few days. At first I had refused to go and take

possession of Roche-Mauprat.

“You really must,” my uncle had said, “go and see the improvements I

have made in your property, the lands which have been brought under

cultivation, the cattle that I have put on each of your metayer-farms.

Now is the time for you to see how your affairs stand, and show your

tenants that you take an interest in their work. Otherwise, on my death,

everything will go from bad to worse and you will be obliged to let it,

which may bring you in a larger income, perhaps, but will diminish the

value of the property. I am too old now to go and manage your estate.

For the last two years I have been unable to leave off this miserable

dressing-gown; the abbe does not understand anything about it; Edmee has

an excellent head; but she cannot bring herself to go to that place; she

says she would be too much afraid, which is mere childishness.”

“I know that I ought to display more courage,” I replied; “and yet,

uncle, what you are asking me to do is for me the most difficult thing

in the world. I have not set foot on that accursed soil since the day

I left it, bearing Edmee away from her captors. It is as if you were

driving me out of heaven to send me on a visit to hell.”

The chevalier shrugged his shoulders; the abbe implored me to bring

myself to do as he wished, as the reluctance I showed was a veritable

disappointment to my uncle. I consented, and with a determination to

conquer myself, I took leave of Edmee for two days. The abbe wanted to

accompany me, to drive away the gloomy thoughts which would no doubt

besiege me; but I had scruples about taking him from Edmee even for this

short time; I knew how necessary he was to her. Tied as she was to the

chevalier’s arm-chair, her life was so serious, so retired, that the

least change was acutely felt. Each year had increased her isolation,

and it had become almost complete since the chevalier’s failing health

had driven from his table those happy children of wine, songs, and

witticisms. He had been a great sportsman; and Saint Hubert’s Day,

which fell on his birthday, had formerly brought all the nobility of the

province to his house. Year after year the courtyards had resounded with

the howls of the pack; year after year the stables had held their two

long rows of spirited horses in their glistening stalls; year after year

the sound of the horn had echoed through the great woods around, or sent

out its blast under the windows of the big hall at each toast of the

brilliant company. But those glorious days had long disappeared; the

chevalier had given up hunting; and the hope of obtaining his daughter’s

hand no longer brought round his arm-chair young men, who were bored by

his old age, his attacks of gout, and the stories which he would repeat

in the evening without remembering that he had already told them in the

morning. Edmee’s obstinate refusals and the dismissal of M. de la Marche

had caused great astonishment, and given rise to many conjectures

among the curious. One young man who was in love with her, and had been

rejected like the rest, was impelled by a stupid and cowardly conceit to

avenge himself on the only woman of his own class who, according to him,

had dared to repulse him. Having discovered that Edmee had been carried

off by the Hamstringers, he spread a report that she had spent a night

of wild debauch at Roche-Mauprat. At best, he only deigned to concede

that she had yielded only to violence. Edmee commanded too much respect

and esteem to be accused of having shown complaisance to the brigands;

but she soon passed for having been a victim of their brutality. Marked

with an indelible stain, she was no longer sought in marriage by any

one. My absence only served to confirm this opinion. I had saved her

from death, it was said, but not from shame, and it was impossible for

me to make her my wife; I was in love with her, and had fled lest I

should yield to the temptation to marry her. All this seemed so probable

that it would have been difficult to make the public accept the true

version. They were the less ready to accept it from the fact that Edmee

had been unwilling to put an end to the evil reports by giving her

hand to a man she could not love. Such, then, were the causes of her

isolation; it was not until later that I fully understood them. But I

could see the austerity of the chevalier’s home and Edmee’s melancholy

calm, and I was afraid to drop even a dry leaf in the sleeping waters.

Thus I begged the abbe to remain with them until my return. I took no

one with me except my faithful sergeant Marcasse. Edmee had declared

that he must not leave me, and had arranged that henceforth he was to

share Patience’s elegant hut and administrative life.

I arrived at Roche-Mauprat one foggy evening in the early days of

autumn; the sun was hidden, and all Nature was wrapped in silence and

mist. The plains were deserted; the air alone seemed alive with the

noise of great flocks of birds of passage; cranes were drawing their

gigantic triangles across the sky, and storks at an immeasurable

height were filling the clouds with mournful cries, which fell upon the

saddened country like the dirge of parting summer. For the first time in

the year I felt a chilliness in the air. I think that all men are filled

with an involuntary sadness at the approach of the inclement season.

In the first hoar-frosts there is something which bids man remember the

approaching dissolution of his own being.

My companion and I had traversed woods and heaths without saying a

single word; we had made a long _detour_ to avoid Gazeau Tower, which I

felt I could not bear to look upon again. The sun was sinking in shrouds

of gray when we passed the portcullis at Roche-Mauprat. This portcullis

was broken; the drawbridge was never raised, and the only things that

crossed it now were peaceful flocks and their careless shepherds. The

fosses were half-filled, and the bluish osiers were already spreading

out their flexible branches over the shallow waters; nettles were

growing at the foot of the crumbling towers, and the traces of the

fire seemed still fresh upon the walls. The farm buildings had all been

repaired; and the court, full of cattle and poultry and sheep-dogs and

agricultural implements, contrasted strangely with the gloomy inclosure

in which I still seemed to see the red flames of the besiegers shooting

up, and the black blood of the Mauprats flowing.

I was received with the quiet and somewhat chilly hospitality of the

peasants of Berry. They did not lay themselves out to please me, but

they let me want for nothing. Quarters were found for me in the only

one of the old wings which had not been damaged in the siege, or

subsequently abandoned to the ravages of time. The massive architecture

of the body of the building dated from the tenth century; the door was

smaller than the windows, and the windows themselves gave so little

light that we had to take candles to find our way, although the sun had

hardly set. The building had been restored provisionally to serve as an

occasional lodging for the new seigneur or his stewards. My Uncle Hubert

had often been there to see to my interests so long as his strength had

allowed him; and they showed me to the room which he had reserved for

himself, and which had therefore been known as the master’s room. The

best things that had been saved from the old furniture had been placed

there; and, as it was cold and damp, in spite of all the trouble they

had taken to make it habitable, the tenant’s servant preceded me with a

firebrand in one hand and a fagot in the other.

Blinded by the smoke which she scattered round me in clouds, and

deceived by the new entrance which they had made in another part of the

courtyard, and by certain corridors which they had walled up to save the

trouble of looking after them, I reached the room without recognising

anything; indeed, I could not have said in what part of the old

buildings I was, to such an extent had the new appearance of the

courtyard upset my recollections, and so little had my mind in its gloom

and agitation been impressed by surrounding objects.

While the servant was lighting the fire, I threw myself into a chair,

and, burying my head in my hands, fell into a melancholy train of

thought. My position, however, was not without a certain charm; for the

past naturally appears in an embellished or softened form to the minds

of young men, those presumptuous masters of the future. When, by dint of

blowing the brand, the servant had filled the room with dense smoke, she

went off to fetch some embers and left me alone. Marcasse had remained

in the stable to attend to our horses. Blaireau had followed me;

lying down by the hearth, he glanced at me from time to time with a

dissatisfied air, as if to ask me the reason of such wretched lodging

and such a poor fire.

Suddenly, as I cast my eyes round the room, old memories seemed to

awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame

up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright

though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous

appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and sat down

between my legs, as if he thought that something strange and unexpected

was going to happen.

I then realized that this place was none other than my grandfather

Tristan’s bed-room, afterward occupied for several years by his eldest

son, the detestable John, my cruelest oppressor, the most crafty and

cowardly of the Hamstringers. I was filled with a sense of terror and

disgust on recognising the furniture, even the very bed with twisted

posts on which my grandfather had given up his blackened soul to God,

amid all the torments of a lingering death agony. The arm-chair which I

was sitting in was the one in which John the Crooked (as he was pleased

to call himself in his facetious days) used to sit and think out his

villainies or issue his odious orders. At this moment I thought I saw

the ghosts of all the Mauprats passing before me, with their bloody

hands and their eyes dulled with wine. I got up and was about to yield

to the horror I felt by taking to flight, when suddenly I saw a figure

rise up in front of me, so distinct, so recognisable, so different in

its vivid reality from the chimeras that had just besieged me, that I

fell back in my chair, all bathed in a cold sweat. Standing by the

bed was John Mauprat. He had just got out, for he was holding the

half-opened curtain in his hand. He seemed to me the same as formerly,

only he was still thinner, and paler and more hideous. His head was

shaved, and his body wrapped in a dark winding-sheet. He gave me a

hellish glance; a smile full of hate and contempt played on his thin,

shrivelled lips. He stood motionless with his gleaming eyes fixed on me,

and seemed as if about to speak. In that instant I was convinced that

what I was looking on was a living being, a man of flesh and blood; it

seems incredible, therefore, that I should have felt paralyzed by such

childish fear. But it would be idle for me to deny it, nor have I ever

yet been able to find an explanation; I was riveted to the ground with

fear. The man’s glance petrified me; I could not utter a sound. Blaireau

rushed at him; then he waved the folds of his funeral garment, like a

shroud all foul with the dampness of the tomb, and I fainted.

When I recovered consciousness Marcasse was by my side, anxiously

endeavouring to lift me. I was lying on the ground rigid as a corpse. It

was with a great difficulty that I collected my thoughts; but, as soon

as I could stand upright, I seized Marcasse and hurriedly dragged him

out of the accursed room. I had several narrow escapes of falling as

I hastened down the winding stairs, and it was only on breathing the

evening air in the courtyard, and smelling the healthy odour of the

stables, that I recovered the use of my reason.

I did not hesitate to look upon what had just happened as an

hallucination. I had given proof of my courage in war in the presence of

my worthy sergeant; I did not blush, therefore, to confess the truth

to him. I answered his questions frankly, and I described my horrible

vision with such minute details that he, too, was impressed with the

reality of it, and, as he walked about with me in the courtyard, kept

repeating with a thoughtful air:

“Singular, singular! Astonishing!”

“No, it is not astonishing,” I said, when I felt that I had quite

recovered. “I experienced a most painful sensation on my way here;

for several days I had struggled to overcome my aversion to seeing

Roche-Mauprat again. Last night I had a nightmare, and I felt so

exhausted and depressed this morning that, if I had not been afraid of

offending my uncle, I should have postponed this disagreeable visit. As

we entered the place, I felt a chill come over me; there seemed to be a

weight on my chest, and I could not breathe. Probably, too, the pungent

smoke that filled the room disturbed my brain. Again, after all the

hardships and dangers of our terrible voyage, from which we have hardly

recovered, either of us, is it astonishing that my nerves gave way at

the first painful emotion?”

“Tell me,” replied Marcasse, who was still pondering the matter, “did

you notice Blaireau at the moment? What did Blaireau do?”

“I thought I saw Blaireau rush at the phantom at the moment when it

disappeared; but I suppose I dreamt that like the rest.”

“Hum!” said the sergeant. “When I entered, Blaireau was wildly excited.

He kept coming to you, sniffing, whining in his way, running to the

bed, scratching the wall, coming to me, running to you. Strange, that!

Astonishing, captain, astonishing, that!”

After a silence of a few moments:

“Devil don’t return!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Dead never

return; besides, why dead, John? Not dead! Still two Mauprats! Who

knows? Where the devil? Dead don’t return; and my master--mad? Never.

Ill? No.”

After this colloquy the sergeant went and fetched a light, drew his

faithful sword from the scabbard, whistled Blaireau, and bravely seized

the rope which served as a balustrade for the staircase, requesting me

to remain below. Great as was my repugnance to entering the room again,

I did not hesitate to follow Marcasse, in spite of his recommendation.

Our first care was to examine the bed; but while we had been talking in

the courtyard the servant had brought clean sheets, had made the bed,

and was now smoothing the blankets.

“Who has been sleeping there?” asked Marcasse, with his usual caution.

“Nobody,” she replied, “except M. le Chevalier or M. l’Abbe Aubert, in

the days when they used to come.”

“But yesterday, or to-day, I mean?” said Marcasse.

“Oh! yesterday and to-day, nobody, sir; for it is quite two years since

M. le Chevalier came here; and as for M. l’Abbe, he never sleeps here,

now that he comes alone. He arrives in the morning, has lunch with us,

and goes back in the evening.”

“But the bed was disarranged,” said Marcasse, looking at her

attentively.

“Oh, well! that may be, sir,” she replied. “I do not know how they left

it the last time some one slept here; I did not pay any attention to

that as I put on the sheets; all I know is that M. Bernard’s cloak was

lying on the top.”

“My cloak?” I exclaimed. “It was left in the stable.”

“And mine, too,” said Marcasse. “I have just folded both together and

put them on the corn-bin.”

“You must have had two, then,” replied the servant; “for I am sure I

took one off the bed. It was a black cloak, not new.”

Mine, as a fact, was lined with red and trimmed with gold lace.

Marcasse’s was light gray. It could not, therefore, have been one of

our cloaks brought up for a moment by the man and then taken back to the

stable.

“But, what did you do with it?” said the sergeant.

“My word, sir,” replied the fat girl, “I put it there, over the

arm-chair. You must have taken it while I went to get a candle. I can’t

see it now.”

We searched the room thoroughly; the cloak was not to be found. We

pretended that we needed it, not denying that it was ours. The servant

unmade the bed in our presence, and then went and asked the man what

he had done with it. Nothing could be found either in the bed or in the

room; the man had not been upstairs. All the farm-folk were in a state

of excitement, fearing that some one might be accused of theft. We

inquired if a stranger had not come to Roche-Mauprat, and if he was

not still there. When we ascertained that these good people had neither

housed or seen any one, we reassured them about the lost cloak by saying

that Marcasse had accidentally folded it with the two others. Then we

shut ourselves in the room, in order to explore it at our ease; for it

was now almost evident that what I had seen was by no means a ghost, but

John Mauprat himself, or a man very like him, whom I had mistaken for

John.

Marcasse having aroused Blaireau by voice and gesture, watched all his

movements.

“Set your mind at rest,” he said with pride; “the old dog has not

forgotten his old trade. If there is a hole, a hole as big as your hand,

have no fear. Now, old dog! Have no fear.”

Blaireau, indeed, after sniffing everywhere, persisted in scratching the

wall where I had seen the apparition; he would start back every time his

pointed nose came to a certain spot in the wainscotting; then, wagging

his bushy tail with a satisfied air, he would return to his master as if

to tell him to concentrate his attention on this spot. The sergeant then

began to examine the wall and the woodwork; he tried to insinuate his

sword into some crack; there was no sign of an opening. Still, a door

might have been there, for the flowers carved on the woodwork would hide

a skilfully constructed sliding panel. The essential thing was to find

the spring that made this panel work; but that was impossible in spite

of all the efforts we made for two long hours. In vain did we try to

shake the panel; it gave forth the same sound as the others. They were

all sonorous, showing that the wainscot was not in immediate contact

with the masonry. Still, there might be a gap of only a few inches

between them. At last Marcasse, perspiring profusely, stopped, and said

to me:

“This is very stupid; if we searched all night we should not find a

spring if there is none; and however hard we hammered, we could not

break in the door if there happened to be big iron bars behind it, as I

have sometimes seen in other old country-houses.”

“The axe might help us to find a passage,” I said, “if there is one; but

why, simply because your dog scratches the wall, persist in believing

that John Mauprat, or the man who resembles him, could not have come in

and gone out by the door?”

“Come in, if you like,” replied Marcasse, “but gone out--no, on my

honour! For, as the servant came down I was on the staircase brushing my

boots. As soon as I heard something fall here, I rushed up quickly three

stairs at a time, and found that it was you--like a corpse, stretched

out on the floor, very ill; no one inside nor outside, on my honour!

“In that case, then, I must have dreamt of my fiend of an uncle, and the

servant must have dreamt of the black cloak; for it is pretty certain

that there is no secret door here; and even if there were one, and all

the Mauprats, living and dead, knew the secret of it, what were that to

us? Do we belong to the police that we should hunt out these wretched

creatures? And if by chance we found them hidden somewhere, should we

not help them to escape, rather than hand them over to justice? We are

armed; we need not be afraid that they will assassinate us to-night; and

if they amuse themselves by frightening us, my word, woe betide them!

I have no eye for either relatives or friends when I am startled in my

sleep. So come, let us attack the omelette that these good people my

tenants are preparing for us; for if we continue knocking and scratching

the walls they will think we are mad.”

Marcasse yielded from a sense of duty rather than from conviction. He

seemed to attach great importance to the discovery of this mystery, and

to be far from easy in his mind. He was unwilling to let me remain alone

in the haunted room, and pretended that I might fall ill again and have

a fit.

“Oh, this time,” I said, “I shall not play the coward. The cloak has

cured me of my fear of ghosts; and I should not advise any one to meddle

with me.”

The hildago was obliged to leave me alone. I loaded my pistols and put

them on the table within reach of my hand; but these precautions were a

pure waste of time; nothing disturbed the silence of the room, and

the heavy red silk curtains, with their coat of arms at the corners in

tarnished silver, were not stirred by the slightest breath. Marcasse

returned and, delighted at finding me as cheerful as he had left me,

began preparing our supper with as much care as if we had come to

Roche-Mauprat for the sole purpose of making a good meal. He made jokes

about the capon which was still singing on the spit, and about the wine

which was so like a brush in the throat. His good humour increased when

the tenant appeared, bringing a few bottles of excellent Madeira, which

had been left with him by the chevalier, who liked to drink a glass or

two before setting foot in the stirrup. In return we invited the worthy

man to sup with us, as the least tedious way of discussing business

matters.

“Good,” he said; “it will be like old times when the peasants used to

eat at the table of the seigneurs of Roche-Mauprat. You are doing the

same, Monsieur Bernard, you are quite right.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied very coldly; “only I behave thus with those who

owe me money, not those to whom I owe it.”

This reply, and the word “sir,” frightened him so much that he was at

great pains to excuse himself from sitting down to table. However, I

insisted, as I wished to give him the measure of my character at once. I

treated him as a man I was raising to my own level, not as one to whom I

wished to descend. I forced him to be cleanly in his jokes, but allowed

him to be free and facetious within the limits of decent mirth. He was

a frank, jovial man. I questioned him minutely to discover if he was

not in league with the phantom who was in the habit of leaving his cloak

upon the bed. This, however, seemed far from probable; the man evidently

had such an aversion for the Hamstringers, that, had not a regard for

my relationship held him back, he would have been only too glad to have

given them such a dressing in my presence as they deserved. But I could

not allow him any license on this point; so I requested him to give me

an account of my property, which he did with intelligence, accuracy, and

honesty.

As he withdrew I noticed that the Madeira had had considerable effect on

him; he seemed to have no control over his legs, which kept catching

in the furniture; and yet he had been in sufficient possession of his

faculties to reason correctly. I have always observed that wine acts

much more powerfully on the muscles of peasants than on their nerves;

that they rarely lose their heads, and that, on the contrary, stimulants

produce in them a bliss unknown to us; the pleasure they derive from

drunkenness is quite different from ours and very superior to our

febrile exaltation.

When Marcasse and I found ourselves alone, though we were not drunk, we

realized that the wine had filled us with gaiety and light-heartedness

which we should not have felt at Roche-Mauprat, even without the

adventure of the ghost. Accustomed as we were to speak our thoughts

freely, we confessed mutually, and agreed that we were much better

prepared than before supper to receive all the bogies of Varenne.

This word “bogey” reminded me of the adventure which had brought me into

far from friendly contact with Patience at the age of thirteen. Marcasse

knew about it already, but he knew very little of my character at that

time, and I amused myself by telling him of my wild rush across the

fields after being thrashed by the sorcerer.

“This makes me think,” I concluded by saying, “that I have an

imagination which easily gets overexcited, and that I am not above fear

of the supernatural. Thus the apparition just now . . .”

“No matter, no matter,” said Marcasse, looking at the priming of my

pistols, and putting them on the table by my bed. “Do not forget that

all the Hamstringers are not dead; that, if John is in this world, he

will do harm until he is under the ground, and trebly locked in hell.”

The wine was loosening the hidalgo’s tongue; on those rare occasions

when he allowed himself to depart from his usual sobriety, he was not

wanting in wit. He was unwilling to leave me, and made a bed for himself

by the side of mine. My nerves were excited by the incidents of the day,

and I allowed myself, therefore, to speak of Edmee, not in such a way as

to deserve the shadow of a reproach from her if she had heard my words,

but more freely than I might have spoken with a man who was as yet my

inferior and not my friend, as he became later. I could not say exactly

how much I confessed to him of my sorrows and hopes and anxieties; but

those confidences had a disastrous effect, as you will soon see.

We fell asleep while we were talking, with Blaireau at his master’s

feet, the hidalgo’s sword across his knees near the dog, the light

between us, my pistols ready to hand, my hunting-knife under my pillow,

and the bolts shot. Nothing disturbed our repose. When the sun awakened

us the cocks were crowing merrily in the courtyard, and the labourers

were cracking their rustic jokes as they yoked the oxen under our

windows.

“All the same there is something at the bottom of it.”

Such was Marcasse’s first remark as he opened his eyes, and took up the

conversation where he had dropped it the night before.

“Did you see or hear anything during the night?” I asked.

“Nothing at all,” he replied. “All the same, Blaireau has been disturbed

in his sleep; for my sword has fallen down; and then, we found no

explanation of what happened here.”

“Let who will explain it,” I answered. “I shall certainly not trouble

myself.”

“Wrong, wrong; you are wrong!”

“That may be, my good sergeant; but I do not like this room at all, and

it seems to me so ugly by daylight, that I feel that I must get far away

from it, and breathe some pure air.”

“Well, I will go with you; but I shall return. I do not want to leave

this to chance. I know what John Mauprat is capable of; you don’t.”

“I do not wish to know; and if there is any danger here for myself or my

friends, I do not wish you to return.”

Marcasse shook his head and said nothing. We went round the farm once

more before departing. Marcasse was very much struck with a certain

incident to which I should have paid but little attention. The farmer

wished to introduce me to his wife, but she could not be persuaded to

see me, and went and hid herself in the hemp-field. I attributed this to

the shyness of youth.

“Fine youth, my word!” said Marcasse; “youth like mine fifty years old

and more! There is something beneath it, something beneath, I tell you.”

“What the devil can there be?”

“Hum! She was very friendly with John Mauprat in her day. She found

his crooked legs to her liking. I know about it; yes, I know many other

things, too; many things--you may take my word!”

“You shall tell me them the next time we come; and that will not be so

soon; for my affairs are going on much better than if I interfered with

them; and I should not like to get into the habit of drinking Madeira

to prevent myself from being frightened at my own shadow. And now,

Marcasse, I must ask you as a favour not to tell any one what has

happened. Everybody has not your respect for your captain.”

“The man who does not respect my captain is an idiot,” answered the

hidalgo, in a tone of authority; “but, if you order me, I will say

nothing.”

He kept his word. I would not on any account have had Edmee’s mind

disturbed by this stupid tale. However, I could not prevent Marcasse

from carrying out his design; early the following morning he

disappeared, and I learnt from Patience that he had returned to

Roche-Mauprat under the pretence of having forgotten something.