"Bravo!" cried Ravanne, "that is what I call speaking, chevalier. As soon as we have cut each other's throats, I hope you will grant me your friendship. I have heard you much spoken of in good quarters, and have long wished to make your acquaintance."
"Come, come, Ravanne," said Fargy, "since you have undertaken to be our guide, show us the way."
Ravanne sprang into the wood like a young fawn: his five companions followed. At the end of about ten minutes' walking, during which the six adversaries had maintained the most profound silence, either from fear of being heard, or from that natural feeling which makes a man in the moment of danger reflective for a time, they found themselves in the midst of a glade, surrounded on all sides by a screen of trees.
"Well," said Ravanne, looking round him in a satisfied manner, "what do you say to the locality?"
"I say that if you boast of having discovered it," said the captain, "you are a strange kind of Christopher Columbus. If you had told me it was here you were coming, I could have guided you with my eyes shut."——"Well," replied Ravanne, "we will endeavor that you shall leave it in the same manner."
"It is with you that my business lies, Monsieur de Lafare," said D'Harmental, throwing his hat on the ground.
"Yes, monsieur," replied the captain of the guards, following the example of the chevalier; "and at the same time I know that nothing could give me more honor and more pain than a rencontre with you, particularly for such a cause."
D'Harmental smiled as a man on whom this flower of politeness was not lost, but his only answer was to draw his sword.
"It appears, my dear baron," said Fargy, addressing himself to Valef, "that you are on the point of setting out for Spain."
"I ought to have left last night; and nothing less than the pleasure I promised myself in seeing you this morning would have detained me till now, so important is my errand."