I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Étienne did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hôtel de Lorraine hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.
"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Félix."
But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois Lanternes.
The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.
I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.
The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale. "This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where the staircase was.
Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door of Maître Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:
"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know nothing of his whereabouts."
As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look at me in fresh dread.
"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a panther had got me.