The Paris-Chartres diligence had gone by an hour ago, and had picked up one solitary passenger at the cross roads. Soon after that a hired chaise, coming from Dreux, had driven up to the "Farmers Paradise." A lady and a gentleman had alighted from it and gone into the house, while the driver sought shelter for his horse in the tumbledown barn at the back of the house and a warm corner for himself in the kitchen.
It was then three o'clock in the afternoon, and the roads and country around appeared desolate and still. M. le Marquis de Trévargan sat with his niece, Constance de Plélan, at a trestle-table in a corner of the coffee-room. It was they who had driven over from Dreux in the hired chaise. The landlord had served them with soup which, though unpalatable in other ways, was, at any rate, hot and therefore very welcome after the long, cold journey in the narrow, rickety chaise.
Three or four men—ill-clad, travel-stained and unwashed—were assembled in the opposite corner of the room, talking in whispers, and near the door a couple of farm labourers were settling accounts with mine host, whilst a third, seemingly overcome by papa Gorot's "nectar," was sprawling across the table with arms outstretched and face buried between them—fast asleep.
Gorot, having settled with the two labourers, shook this lout vigorously by the shoulder.
"Now, then," he shouted roughly. "Up you get! You cannot stay here all night, you know!"
The sleeper raised a puckered, imbecile face to the disturber of his peace.
"Can't I?" he said slowly with the deliberateness of the drunkard. And his head fell down again with a thud upon his arm.
Gorot swore lustily.
"Out you get!" he shouted into the man's ear. "You drunken oaf—I'll put you out if you don't go!"
Once more the sleeper raised his head and stared with dim, bleary eyes at his host.