Madame de Peyrelade, on the contrary, was scarcely changed since Jacques had last seen her. She was then sixteen; she was now five-and-twenty; and, save in a more melancholy expression, a sadder smile, and a bearing more dignified and self-possessed, the good herdsman told himself that nine years had left no trace of their flight over the head of "la belle Marguerite." The Countess, being still in mourning, wore a riding-dress of grey cloth ornamented with black velvet, with a hat and plume of the same colours. Thus attired, she so strongly resembled the portraits of her namesake, the beautiful Marguerite de Navarre, that one might almost have fancied she had just stepped out of the canvas upon that wild precipice amidst a group of still wilder mountaineers, such as Salvator loved to paint.
There were some minutes of uneasy silence. The wondering herdsmen had retreated into a little knot; the captain bit his glove, and glanced at his sister under his eyelashes; the Countess tapped her little foot impatiently upon the ground; and the Curé of St. Saturnin, with an awkward assumption of indifference, bent his sallow face over the wounded partridge, which was nestled within the folds of his black serge cassock.
"Mordieu! sister," exclaimed the Baron, with his unpleasant laugh, "are we all struck dumb at this woeful catastrophe—this woodland tragedy? Being the culprit, I am, however, ready to throw myself at your feet. You prayed to me for mercy just now, for a white partridge, and I denied it. I now entreat it for myself, having offended you."
The Countess, smiling somewhat sadly, held out her hand, which the dragoon kissed with an air of profound respect.
"George," she said, "I am foolishly superstitious about these white partridges. A person who was very dear to me gave me once upon a time a white partridge. One day it escaped. Was it an evil omen? I know not; but I never saw that person again."
The young man frowned impatiently, and, changing the conversation, exclaimed, with a disdainful movement of the head:—
"We have the honour, Madame, to be the object of your herdsmen's curiosity all this time. The fellows, I should imagine, would be more fitly occupied among their cows. Or is it the custom on your estates, my amiable sister, that these people should pass their time in idleness. A word to the steward would not, methinks, be altogether out of place on this subject."
The herdsmen shrank back at these words, which, though uttered in the purest French of Versailles, were sufficiently intelligible to their ears; but the Countess, with a kindly smile, and a quick glance towards the priest, undertook their defence.
It was holiday, she said, doubtless in consequence of his own arrival in Auvergne; and besides, did he not see that M. the good Curé has been delivering to them some pious exhortation, as was his wont?
The priest blushed and bowed, and made an inward resolution of penance that same night, for participation in that innocent falsehood. It was his first sin against truth.