The Bishop had remained standing before him in an attitude of profound respect. "Will your Highness deign to come up to my room?" he said. "Dry clothes and a warm bath have been prepared."
"I'll go in a moment," replied His Highness. He had still some difficulty in recovering his breath, and spoke irritably like a wayward sick child. "But let me tell you at once that our movements have been watched from the moment that we set foot on these shores. The crossing was very rough. The gale is raging furiously. The skipper has put into Avranches. He put me off at the Goat's Creek and left me there with de Verthamont and du Roy. As soon as we started to come hither we realised that there was someone on our track. We consulted together and decided that it would be best to separate. De Verthamont went one way and du Roy another, and I ran all the way here."
"Was your Highness shadowed after that?" asked the Bishop.
"I think not. I heard no one. But then the wind kept up an incessant din."
"And did Sébastien meet your Highness?"
"Yes! In the Devil's Bowl. He followed me at a distance as far as your gates. He thought that he, too, had been shadowed all day. Early this morning he reconnoitred as far as Coutances, and there he heard that a couple of regiments of cavalry and a battery of artillery had arrived from St. Lô."
The Bishop made no further comment. His enthusiasm and excitement of a moment ago appeared to have fallen away from him; his finely chiselled face had become serene and pale; only in his deep-set eyes there seemed to smoulder a dull fire, as if with the prescience of impending doom.
A moment or two later he persuaded the Comte d'Artois to come up to his own private apartments. Here a warm bath, dry clothes and a well-cooked supper restored to the unfortunate Prince a certain measure of courage.
"What's to be done?" he asked with a querulous tone in his hoarse voice.
"For the moment," replied the Bishop earnestly, "I would respectfully beg of your Highness to remain in these apartments, which have the infinite advantage of a secret hiding-place which no police agent will ever discover."