Bab Bab 10 · THE TRESPASSERS

. THE TRESPASSERS

Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct

rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily

and mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going,

or of whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put

as great a distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.

He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there, by

employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into

sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen,

and against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was

one which he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which

he felt no real impulse to act.

Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen him,

with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. “For one who was anything

but a man of action,” he writes, “I felt that I had acquitted myself

none so badly.” It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy

“Confessions.” Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental

and not physical activities, and apologizing when dire necessity

drives him into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon

his philosophic detachment--for which I confess he had justification

enough--to betray his besetting vanity.

With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He had

stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres.

“It is much better,” he says somewhere, “to be wicked than to be stupid.

Most of this world’s misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of

wickedness, but of stupidity.” And we know that of all stupidities he

considered anger the most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to

be angry with a creature like M. de Lesdiguieres--a lackey, a fribble,

a nothing, despite his potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have

discharged his self-imposed mission without arousing the vindictive

resentment of the King’s Lieutenant.

He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in

which he stood, a single louis d’or and a few pieces of silver for all

capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve

him from the consequences of infringing it.

He had, in addition--but these things that were to be the real salvation

of him he did not reckon--his gift of laughter, sadly repressed of late,

and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the

stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.

Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt

that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little township of

Guichen, and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a

good seven miles behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.

He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when

he came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to

the footpath that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture

interspersed with clumps of gorse. A stone’s throw away on his right the

common was bordered by a thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building

which he knew to be an open barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch

of meadowland. That dark, silent shadow it may have been that had

brought him to a standstill, suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness.

A moment he hesitated; then he struck across towards a spot where a gap

in the hedge was closed by a five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open,

went through the gap, and stood now before the barn. It was as big as

a house, yet consisted of no more than a roof carried upon half a dozen

tall, brick pillars. But densely packed under that roof was a great

stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so cold a night. Stout

timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with projecting ends to

serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to pack or withdraw

hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis climbed by one

of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to kneel, for

lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat and

neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a trough for

his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay

he had removed. Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and

soundly asleep.

When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from

which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this before

he realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then to his

awakening senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to which at first

he paid little heed. He was deliciously refreshed, luxuriously drowsy

and luxuriously warm.

But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head clear

of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly

quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good.

Then he caught the reassuring accents of a woman, musical and silvery,

though laden with alarm.

“Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my

father...”

And upon this a man’s voice broke in, calm and reassuring:

“No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are quite

safe. Why do you start at shadows?”

“Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very

thought.”

More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard enough to

know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who, with less to

fear of life, were yet--after the manner of their kind--more timid of

heart than he. Curiosity drew him from his warm trough to the edge of

the hay. Lying prone, he advanced his head and peered down.

In the space of cropped meadow between the barn and the hedge stood a

man and a woman, both young. The man was a well-set-up, comely fellow,

with a fine head of chestnut hair tied in a queue by a broad bow of

black satin. He was dressed with certain tawdry attempts at ostentatious

embellishments, which did not prepossess one at first glance in his

favour. His coat of a fashionable cut was of faded plum-coloured velvet

edged with silver lace, whose glory had long since departed. He affected

ruffles, but for want of starch they hung like weeping willows over

hands that were fine and delicate. His breeches were of plain black

cloth, and his black stockings were of cotton--matters entirely out of

harmony with his magnificent coat. His shoes, stout and serviceable,

were decked with buckles of cheap, lack-lustre paste. But for his

engaging and ingenuous countenance, Andre-Louis must have set him down

as a knight of that order which lives dishonestly by its wits. As it

was, he suspended judgment whilst pushing investigation further by a

study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed that it was a study

that attracted him prodigiously. And this notwithstanding the fact that,

bookish and studious as were his ways, and in despite of his years, it

was far from his habit to waste consideration on femininity.

The child--she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the

most--possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that

went very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of movement

the like of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have

beheld assembled in one person. And her voice too--that musical, silvery

voice that had awakened him--possessed in its exquisite modulations an

allurement of its own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in

the ugliest of her sex. She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the

hood being thrown back, her dainty head was all revealed to him. There

were glints of gold struck by the morning sun from her light nut-brown

hair that hung in a cluster of curls about her oval face. Her complexion

was of a delicacy that he could compare only with a rose petal. He could

not at that distance discern the colour of her eyes, but he guessed them

blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under the fine, dark line of

eyebrows.

He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved

him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow, who was

partly clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman. He could

not guess her station, but the speech that reached him was cultured in

tone and word. He strained to listen.

“I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded,” she was

saying. “Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet

if we marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and

of gaining his consent I almost despair.”

Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw

through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by

cheap paste buckles.

“My dear Climene,” the young man was answering her, standing squarely

before her, and holding both her hands, “you are wrong to despond. If I

do not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the

consent of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of

the pleasure of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith in

me, and in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should

be here at any moment.”

The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was

he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and

formal manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such

a prig? And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!

Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory. Meanwhile, she was

speaking.

“That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest

your stratagem should be too late. I am to marry this horrible Marquis

of Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes to sign the

contract--to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!” It was a cry of

pain from that tender young heart. “The very name burns my lips. If it

were mine I could never utter it--never! The man is so detestable. Save

me, Leandre. Save me! You are my only hope.”

Andre-Louis was conscious of a pang of disappointment. She failed to

soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently infected

by the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an atrocious

lack of sincerity about her words. They touched his mind, but left his

heart unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his antipathy to M. Leandre

and to the issue involved.

So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That implied birth on

her side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young

adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing

to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as

the maddest part of a mad species.

“It shall never be!” M. Leandre was storming passionately. “Never! I

swear it!” And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven--Ajax

defying Jupiter. “Ah, but here comes our subtle friend...” (Andre-Louis

did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned to face

the gap in the hedge.) “He will bring us news, I know.”

Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it emerged

a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a three-cornered hat worn well

down over his nose so as to shade his face. And when presently he

doffed this hat and made a sweeping bow to the young lovers, Andre-Louis

confessed to himself that had he been cursed with such a hangdog

countenance he would have worn his hat in precisely such a manner, so

as to conceal as much of it as possible. If M. Leandre appeared to

be wearing, in part at least, the cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer

appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of M. Leandre. Yet despite his vile

clothes and viler face, with its three days’ growth of beard, the

fellow carried himself with a certain air; he positively strutted as he

advanced, and he made a leg in a manner that was courtly and practised.

“Monsieur,” said he, with the air of a conspirator, “the time for action

has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why.”

The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped

hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its white

fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and

dismay.

Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on. “I was at the inn an hour ago when

he descended there, and I studied him attentively whilst he was at

breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains me of our success.

As for what he looks like, I could entertain you at length upon the

fashion in which nature has designed his gross fatuity. But that is no

matter. We are concerned with what he is, with the wit of him. And I

tell you confidently that I find him so dull and stupid that you may be

confident he will tumble headlong into each and all of the traps I have

so cunningly prepared for him.”

“Tell me, tell me! Speak!” Climene implored him, holding out her hands

in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted. And then

on the instant she caught her breath on a faint scream. “My father!” she

exclaimed, turning distractedly from one to the other of those two. “He

is coming! We are lost!”

“You must fly, Climene!” said M. Leandre.

“Too late!” she sobbed. “Too late! He is here.”

“Calm, mademoiselle, calm!” the subtle friend was urging her. “Keep calm

and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well.”

“Oh!” cried M. Leandre, limply. “Say what you will, my friend, this is

ruin--the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from

this. Never!”

Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon

face and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid

bourgeois. There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression that it

found was an amazement to Andre-Louis.

“Leandre, you’re an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm! Your

words wouldn’t convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they mean

at all? Thus,” he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad

gesture, he took his stand at M. Leandre’s side, and repeated the very

words that Leandre had lately uttered, what time the three observed him

coolly and attentively.

“Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin--the end of all our

hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!”

A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face M.

Leandre. “Thus,” he bade him contemptuously. “Let the passion of your

hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider that you are not

asking Scaramouche here whether he has put a patch in your breeches. You

are a despairing lover expressing...”

He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what was

afoot, and how duped he had been, had loosed his laughter. The sound

of it pealing and booming uncannily under the great roof that so

immediately confined him was startling to those below.

The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his own

fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.

“Hark!” he cried, “the very gods laugh at you, Leandre.” Then he

addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. “Hi! You

there!”

Andre-Louis revealed himself by a further protrusion of his tousled

head.

“Good-morning,” said he, pleasantly. Rising now on his knees, his

horizon was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond the

hedge. He beheld there an enormous and very battered travelling chaise,

a cart piled up with timbers partly visible under the sheet of oiled

canvas that covered them, and a sort of house on wheels equipped with

a tin chimney, from which the smoke was slowly curling. Three heavy

Flemish horses and a couple of donkeys--all of them hobbled--were

contentedly cropping the grass in the neighbourhood of these vehicles.

These, had he perceived them sooner, must have given him the clue to the

queer scene that had been played under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other

figures were moving. Three at that moment came crowding into the

gap--a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be

Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active youngster, who must be the

lackey Harlequin; and another rather loutish youth who might be a zany

or an apothecary.

All this he took in at a comprehensive glance that consumed no more

time than it had taken him to say good-morning. To that good-morning

Pantaloon replied in a bellow:

“What the devil are you doing up there?”

“Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there,” was the

answer. “I am trespassing.”

“Eh?” said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the

assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was one

that they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was

disconcerting.

“Whose land is this?” he asked, with diminishing assurance.

Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. “I believe it to

be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“That’s a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?”

“The gentleman,” said Andre-Louis, “is the devil; or rather, I should

prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by

comparison.”

“And yet,” interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played

Scaramouche, “by your own confessing you don’t hesitate, yourself, to

trespass upon his property.”

“Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously

unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.

Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature conquers

respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered me last night

when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here without regard for

the very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. At the same time,

M. Scaramouche, you’ll observe that I did not flaunt my trespass quite

as openly as you and your companions.”

Having donned his boots, Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in his

shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he stood there to don

it, the little cunning eyes of the heavy father conned him in detail.

Observing that his clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion, that his

shirt was of fine cambric, and that he expressed himself like a man

of culture, such as he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was disposed to be

civil.

“I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir...” he was beginning.

“Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d’Azyr have orders

to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp.”

They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to the

encampment on the common. There Andre-Louis took his leave of them.

But as he was turning away he perceived a young man of the company

performing his morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one of the wooden

steps at the tail of the house on wheels. A moment he hesitated, then he

turned frankly to M. Pantaloon, who was still at his elbow.

“If it were not unconscionable to encroach so far upon your hospitality,

monsieur,” said he, “I would beg leave to imitate that very excellent

young gentleman before I leave you.”

“But, my dear sir!” Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat

body of the master player. “It is nothing at all. But, by all means.

Rhodomont will provide what you require. He is the dandy of the company

in real life, though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi, Rhodomont!”

The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right angle in

which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out through a foam

of soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as

gentle and amiable off the stage as he was formidable and terrible upon

it, made the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.

So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled

up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured him soap,

a towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon,

in case the gentleman should have lost his own. This last Andre-Louis

declined, but the comb he gratefully accepted, and having presently

washed himself clean, stood, with the towel flung over his left

shoulder, restoring order to his dishevelled locks before a broken piece

of mirror affixed to the door of the travelling house.

He was standing thus, the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly at his

side, when his ears caught the sound of hooves. He looked over his

shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and

loosened mouth. Away across the common, on the road that bordered it, he

beheld a party of seven horsemen in the blue coats with red facings of

the marechaussee.

Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling

gendarmerie. It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had fallen

suddenly upon him.

And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant leading

it sent his bawling voice across the common.

“Hi, there! Hi!” His tone rang with menace.

Every member of the company--and there were some twelve in all--stood at

gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his head thrown back,

his manner that of a King’s Lieutenant.

“Now, what the devil’s this?” quoth he, but whether of Fate or Heaven or

the sergeant, was not clear.

There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting

across the common straight towards the players’ encampment.

Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling

house. He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair,

but mechanically and unconsciously. His mind was all intent upon the

advancing troop, his wits alert and gathered together for a leap in

whatever direction should be indicated.

Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled a

question.

“Who gave you leave to encamp here?”

It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all. He was not

deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business of these

men was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers. That was no part of

their real duty; it was something done in passing--done, perhaps, in the

hope of levying a tax of their own. It was very long odds that they

were from Rennes, and that their real business was the hunting down of

a young lawyer charged with sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon was shouting

back.

“Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land, free

to all.”

The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.

“There is,” said a voice at Pantaloon’s elbow, “no such thing as

communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s vast

domain. This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues from

all who send their beasts to graze here.”

Pantaloon turned to behold at his side Andre-Louis in his shirt-sleeves,

and without a neckcloth, the towel still trailing over his left

shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.

“God of God!” swore Pantaloon. “But it is an ogre, this Marquis de La

Tour d’Azyr!”

“I have told you already what I think of him,” said Andre-Louis. “As for

these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have experience

of their kind.” And without waiting for Pantaloon’s consent, Andre-Louis

stepped forward to meet the advancing men of the marechaussee. He had

realized that here boldness alone could save him.

When a moment later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of this

half-dressed young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time he looked

up with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous, and disarming.

In spite of it the sergeant hailed him gruffly: “Are you the leader of

this troop of vagabonds?”

“Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader.” And he

jerked a thumb in the direction of M. Pantaloon, who stood at gaze out

of earshot in the background. “What is your pleasure, captain?”

“My pleasure is to tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled for

this, all the pack of you.” His voice was loud and bullying. It carried

across the common to the ears of every member of the company, and

brought them all to stricken attention where they stood. The lot of

strolling players was hard enough without the addition of gaolings.

“But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all.”

“It is nothing of the kind.”

“Where are the fences?” quoth Andre-Louis, waving the hand that held the

comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.

“Fences!” snorted the sergeant. “What have fences to do with the matter?

This is terre censive. There is no grazing here save by payment of dues

to the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“But we are not grazing,” quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.

“To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are

grazing!”

“They eat so little,” Andre-Louis apologized, and again essayed his

ingratiating smile.

The sergeant grew more terrible than ever. “That is not the point. The

point is that you are committing what amounts to a theft, and there’s

the gaol for thieves.”

“Technically, I suppose you are right,” sighed Andre-Louis, and fell to

combing his hair again, still looking up into the sergeant’s face. “But

we have sinned in ignorance. We are grateful to you for the warning.”

He passed the comb into his left hand, and with his right fumbled in

his breeches’ pocket, whence there came a faint jingle of coins. “We are

desolated to have brought you out of your way. Perhaps for their trouble

your men would honour us by stopping at the next inn to drink the health

of... of this M. de La Tour d’ Azyr, or any other health that they think

proper.”

Some of the clouds lifted from the sergeant’s brow. But not yet all.

“Well, well,” said he, gruffly. “But you must decamp, you understand.”

He leaned from the saddle to bring his recipient hand to a convenient

distance. Andre-Louis placed in it a three-livre piece.

“In half an hour,” said Andre-Louis.

“Why in half an hour? Why not at once?”

“Oh, but time to break our fast.”

They looked at each other. The sergeant next considered the broad piece

of silver in his palm. Then at last his features relaxed from their

sternness.

“After all,” said he, “it is none of our business to play the tipstaves

for M. de La Tour d’Azyr. We are of the marechaussee from Rennes.”

Andre-Louis’ eyelids played him false by flickering. “But if you linger,

look out for the gardes-champetres of the Marquis. You’ll find them not

at all accommodating. Well, well--a good appetite to you, monsieur,” said

he, in valediction.

“A pleasant ride, my captain,” answered Andre-Louis.

The sergeant wheeled his horse about, his troop wheeled with him. They

were starting off, when he reined up again.

“You, monsieur!” he called over his shoulder. In a bound Andre-Louis was

beside his stirrup. “We are in quest of a scoundrel named Andre-Louis

Moreau, from Gavrillac, a fugitive from justice wanted for the gallows

on a matter of sedition. You’ve seen nothing, I suppose, of a man whose

movements seemed to you suspicious?”

“Indeed, we have,” said Andre-Louis, very boldly, his face eager with

consciousness of the ability to oblige.

“You have?” cried the sergeant, in a ringing voice. “Where? When?”

“Yesterday evening in the neighbourhood of Guignen...”

“Yes, yes,” the sergeant felt himself hot upon the trail.

“There was a fellow who seemed very fearful of being recognized ... a

man of fifty or thereabouts...”

“Fifty!” cried the sergeant, and his face fell. “Bah! This man of ours

is no older than yourself, a thin wisp of a fellow of about your own

height and of black hair, just like your own, by the description. Keep a

lookout on your travels, master player. The King’s Lieutenant in Rennes

has sent us word this morning that he will pay ten louis to any one

giving information that will lead to this scoundrel’s arrest. So there’s

ten louis to be earned by keeping your eyes open, and sending word to

the nearest justices. It would be a fine windfall for you, that.”

“A fine windfall, indeed, captain,” answered Andre-Louis, laughing.

But the sergeant had touched his horse with the spur, and was already

trotting off in the wake of his men. Andre-Louis continued to laugh,

quite silently, as he sometimes did when the humour of a jest was

peculiarly keen.

Then he turned slowly about, and came back towards Pantaloon and the

rest of the company, who were now all grouped together, at gaze.

Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both hands out-held. For a moment

Andre-Louis thought he was about to be embraced.

“We hail you our saviour!” the big man declaimed. “Already the shadow

of the gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very marrow. For

though we be poor, yet are we all honest folk and not one of us has ever

suffered the indignity of prison. Nor is there one of us would survive

it. But for you, my friend, it might have happened. What magic did you

work?”

“The magic that is to be worked in France with a King’s portrait. The

French are a very loyal nation, as you will have observed. They love

their King--and his portrait even better than himself, especially when it

is wrought in gold. But even in silver it is respected. The sergeant

was so overcome by the sight of that noble visage--on a three-livre

piece--that his anger vanished, and he has gone his ways leaving us to

depart in peace.”

“Ah, true! He said we must decamp. About it, my lads! Come, come...”

“But not until after breakfast,” said Andre-Louis. “A half-hour for

breakfast was conceded us by that loyal fellow, so deeply was he

touched. True, he spoke of possible gardes-champetres. But he knows as

well as I do that they are not seriously to be feared, and that if

they came, again the King’s portrait--wrought in copper this time--would

produce the same melting effect upon them. So, my dear M. Pantaloon,

break your fast at your ease. I can smell your cooking from here,

and from the smell I argue that there is no need to wish you a good

appetite.”

“My friend, my saviour!” Pantaloon flung a great arm about the young

man’s shoulders. “You shall stay to breakfast with us.”

“I confess to a hope that you would ask me,” said Andre-Louis.