Under the Red Robe | Page 7

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. But--'
'But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or something else is amiss,' I answered peevishly. 'All the same, I am going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife too--if you have one.'
He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes. But he said nothing, and I dismounted.
'Where can I stable my horse?' I asked.
'I'll put it up,' he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking the reins in his hand.
'Very well,' I said. 'But I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to his beast, and wherever I go I see my horse fed.'
'It will be fed,' he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go into the house. 'The wife is in there,' he continued, looking at me stubbornly.
'IMPRIMIS--if you understand Latin, my friend,'