“And then,” resumed D’Artagnan, “to this decrepitude is probably added poverty, for he must have neglected the little that he had, and the dirty scoundrel, Grimaud, more taciturn than ever and still more drunken than his master—stay, Planchet, it breaks my heart to merely think of it.”
“I fancy myself there and that I see him staggering and hear him stammering,” said Planchet, in a piteous tone, “but at all events we shall soon know the real state of things, for I imagine that those lofty walls, now turning ruby in the setting sun, are the walls of Blois.”
“Probably; and those steeples, pointed and sculptured, that we catch a glimpse of yonder, are similar to those that I have heard described at Chambord.”
At this moment one of those heavy wagons, drawn by bullocks, which carry the wood cut in the fine forests of the country to the ports of the Loire, came out of a byroad full of ruts and turned on that which the two horsemen were following. A man carrying a long switch with a nail at the end of it, with which he urged on his slow team, was walking with the cart.
“Ho! friend,” cried Planchet.
“What’s your pleasure, gentlemen?” replied the peasant, with a purity of accent peculiar to the people of that district and which might have put to shame the cultured denizens of the Sorbonne and the Rue de l’Universite.
“We are looking for the house of Monsieur de la Fere,” said D’Artagnan.
The peasant took off his hat on hearing this revered name.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the wood that I am carting is his; I cut it in his copse and I am taking it to the chateau.”
D’Artagnan determined not to question this man; he did not wish to hear from another what he had himself said to Planchet.