"Where will you stay in the meanwhile?"
"Possibly at the 'Trois-Dauphins' if I can get a room."
"I shall see you again then. The Emperor will stay there while he is in Grenoble. Well, good-night, my dear friend," said de Marmont, as he extended a cordial hand to Clyffurde, who, in the dark, evidently failed to see it. "And don't take the insults of all these fools too much to heart." And he gave an expressive nod in the direction of the stately castle behind him.
"They are dolts," he continued airily; "if they possessed a grain of sense they would have kept on friendly terms with me. As that old fool's son-in-law I could have saved him from all the reprisals which will inevitably fall on all these royalist traitors, now that the Emperor has come into his own again."
Clyffurde was half-way down the stone steps when these words of de Marmont struck upon his ear. Instinctively he retraced his steps. There was a suggestion of impending danger to Crystal in what the young man had said.
"What do you mean by talking about reprisals?" he asked.
"Oh! . . . only the inevitable," replied de Marmont. "The people of the Dauphiné never cared for these royalists, you know . . . and didn't learn to like them any better in these past eleven months since the Restoration. M. le Comte de Cambray has been very high and mighty since his return from exile. He may yet come to wish that he had never quitted the comfortable little provincial town in England where he gave drawing lessons and French lessons to some very bourgeois boys. . . . But here's that coach at last!" he continued with that jaunty air which he had assumed since turning his back upon the reception halls of Brestalou. "Are you sure that you would rather walk than drive with me?"
"No," replied Clyffurde abruptly, "I am not sure. Thank you very much. I think that if you don't object to my somewhat morose company I would like a lift as far as Grenoble."
He wanted to make de Marmont talk, to hear what the young man had to say. From it he thought that he could learn more accurately what danger would threaten Brestalou in the event of Napoleon's successful march to Paris.
That the great adventurer's triumph would be short-lived Clyffurde was perfectly sure. He knew the temper of England and believed in the military genius of Wellington. England would never tolerate for a moment longer than she could help that the firebrand of Europe should once more sit upon the throne of France, and unless the allies had greatly altered their policy in the past ten months and refused England the necessary support, Wellington would be more than a match for the decimated army of Bonaparte.