Laubardemont replied with a hideous laugh:
“As for this idiot here, I am going to give her to an ex-secret judge, at present a smuggler in the Pyrenees at Oleron. He can do what he pleases with her—make her a servant in his posada, for instance. I care not, so that my lord never hears of her.”
Jeanne de Belfiel, her head hanging down, gave no sign of sensibility. Every glimmer of reason was extinguished in her; one word alone remained upon her lips, and this she continually pronounced.
“The judge! the judge! the judge!” she murmured, and was silent.
Her uncle and Joseph threw her, almost like a sack of corn, on one of the horses which were led up by two servants. Laubardemont mounted another, and prepared to leave the camp, wishing to get into the mountains before day.
“A good journey to you!” he said to Joseph. “Execute your business well in Paris. I commend to you Orestes and Pylades.”
“A good journey to you!” answered the other. “I commend to you Cassandra and OEdipus.”
“Oh! he has neither killed his father nor married his mother.”
“But he is on the high-road to those little pleasantries.”
“Adieu, my reverend Father!”