“Here, take this!” she cried, and she tore open her gown and snatched a cross from her bosom. I saw that it was of gold. “It was given to me,” she said, “at Aignan. Now I give it to you to buy bread. It is the dearest thing I have, but I give it gladly, for I am ransoming your soul. Henceforth the le Moynes will be honest men.”
I could not speak, but I dropped at her feet and kissed the cross as she held it down to me. It is an oath, thank God, I have never broken.
“And you will not sell the horse,” she added—what a woman she was! “You will ride him as far as Tours. There you will deliver him to a coureur to be returned to Marsan. I will see that he is claimed. Good-by, dear Pierre,” and she held up her lips.
I kissed her as I would have kissed the Virgin, then my mother and aunt. They seemed quite broken, yet it was clear we must be off. To Marsan and back was only a matter of three hours, and near an hour of this was already gone. I sprang to saddle and looked at them all, once again, standing there in the road. Then I touched spur to flank and was off.
And so, in the course of days, I came to Tours, where I sold the cross and delivered the horse to the coureur. Then to Paris, where I arrived at last, weary and somewhat stained by the road, yet with ten pistoles in my pocket, a good sword at my side, and a light heart in my bosom—the heart of youth!
Two words, did I say? How memory makes one garrulous!
CHAPTER V
M. RIBAUT IS OBDURATE
She sat looking at me for a moment without speaking, her chin in her hands, her eyes bright.
“That is life!” she said, at last. “That is living! That is what I long for! And, oh, how I shall love your sister! What is her name, Pierre?”
“Ninon,” I answered.