“What, in these days!”
He dared his chance of the stone, and began to struggle violently. I doubt if I could have held him long if Crépin and one of the postilions had not come running up to my shout. A few words were enough to explain the situation, and we conducted the fellow to the carriage and strapped him upon one of the horses in a way compromising to his dignity. And so he became of our party when we moved on once more.
* * * * * * *
Coutras clacks with mills and is musical with weirs. The spirit of the warlike king yet informs its old umber walls and toppling houses. I found it a place so fragrant with antique and with natural beauties, that my heart wept over the present human degeneracy that vulgarised it. It lies amongst the last distant swells, as it were, of the great billows of the Auvergne mountains, before those swells have rolled themselves to waste in the sombre flats of the Landes. It is the hill-slope garden on the fringe of the moor; the resting-place of the sea and the high-rock winds; the hostelry where these meet and embrace and people the vineyards with baby breezes. It has grown old listening under its great chestnuts to the sweet thunder of the Isle and the Dronne. Its peasants, pagan in their instinct for beauty, train their vines up the elm and walnut trees, that in autumn they may dance under a dropping rain of grapes. At the same time, I am bound to confess that their wine suffers for the sake of this picturesqueness.
Now, as we entered it by moonlight, it was a panic town, restless, scurrying, lurid. The new spirit ran vile and naked in its venerable streets; the air was poisonous with the breath of ça ira. For, since we left Paris, this had happened. The Girondists were fallen and hunted men, and Tallien and Ysabeau were at La Réole, preparing for a descent on Bordeaux. We learned it all at the gate, and also that the spies and agents of these scoundrels were everywhere abroad, nosing after the escaped deputies, bullying, torturing, and denouncing.
“It would appear we are forestalled,” said Crépin, drily. “M. Thibaut, have you a mind to rake over dead ashes? Well, I have heard of the white wine of Bergerac. At least I will taste that before I go to bed.”
We drove up to the Golden Lion, whither our scamps had preceded us. Patriots hooted our prisoner as we clattered through the streets, or whipped at him with their ramrods. The decent citizens fled before us, and white-faced girls peeped from behind the white curtains of their little bed-chambers, crushing the dimity against their swelling bosoms. Oh! we were great people, I can assure you.
At the hostelry—a high, mud-coloured building, with window-places fringed with stone, and its hill of a roof fretted thick as a dove-cote with dormer casements—they brought to our carriage a poor weeping maid.
“La demoiselle des pleurs,” said Bonnet-rouge, with a grin.
“Eh?” said Crépin.