Under the Red Robe | Page 7

man, my friend?'
I hesitated; then I bowed. What choice had I?
'Nay, nay, speak out!' he said sharply. 'Yes or no, M. de Berault?'
'Yes, your Eminence,' I said reluctantly. Again, I say, what choice had
I?
'You will bring him to Paris, and alive. He knows things, and that is
why I want him. You understand?'
'I understand, Monseigneur,' I answered.
'You will get into the house as you can,' he continued with energy. 'For
that you will need strategy, and good strategy. They suspect everybody.
You must deceive them. If you fail to deceive them, or, deceiving them,
are found out later, I do not think that you will trouble me again, or
break the edict a second time. On the other hand, should you deceive
me'--he smiled still more subtly, but his voice sank to a purring note--'I
will break you on the wheel like the ruined gamester you are!'
I met his look without quailing. 'So be it!' I said recklessly. 'If I do not
bring M. de Cocheforet to Paris, you may do that to me, and more also!'
'It is a bargain!' he answered slowly. 'I think that you will be faithful.
For money, here are a hundred crowns. That sum should suffice; but if
you succeed you shall have twice as much more. That is all, I think.
You understand?'
'Yes, Monseigneur.'
'Then why do you wait?'
'The lieutenant?' I said modestly.

The Cardinal laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or two
on a slip of paper. 'Give him that,' he said in high good- humour. 'I fear,
M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts --in this world!'
CHAPTER II.
AT THE GREEN PILLAR
Cocheforet lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnuts --a
land of deep, leafy bottoms and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and
valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more
sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow mountains that here
limit France. It swarms with game--with wolves and bears, deer and
boars. To the end of his life I have heard that the great king loved this
district, and would sigh, when years and State fell heavily on him, for
the beech groves and box-covered hills of South Bearn. From the
terraced steps of Auch you can see the forest roll away in light and
shadow, vale and upland, to the base of the snow peaks; and, though I
come from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I have seen few
sights that outdo this.
It was the second week of October, when I came to Cocheforet, and,
dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into the place
at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a glory of ruddy
beech leaves, through the silence of forest roads, across clear brooks
and glades still green. I had seen more of the quiet and peace of the
country than had been my share since boyhood, and for that reason, or
because I had no great taste for the task before me--the task now so
imminent--I felt a little hipped. In good faith, it was not a gentleman's
work that I was come to do, look at it how you might.
But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would
not last. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of
necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I
should lose the feeling. When a man is young he seeks solitude, when
he is middle-aged, he flies it and his thoughts. I made therefore for the
'Green Pillar,' a little inn in the village street, to which I had been

directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my
riding switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.
Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean, poor
place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at me
suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host came.
He was a fair-haired man, half-Basque, half- Frenchman, and had
scanned me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for
when he came out he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a well-dressed
stranger--a portent in that out- of-the-way village--but eyed me with a
kind of sullen reserve.
'I can lie here to-night, I suppose?' I said, dropping the reins on the
sorrel's neck. The horse hung its head.
'I don't know,' he answered stupidly.
I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite
the door.
'This is an inn, is it not?' I said.
'Yes,' he answered slowly. 'It is an inn.