“It is most curious,” the speaker was saying. “No one can imagine how it occurred.”
“What is it?” I asked my guide when once we were past the crowd. “What has happened?”
But he merely shook his head, as though it were not his business nor mine, and kept on without replying. I promised myself that I would some day repay him twice over for his insolence. The blood is warm at twenty!
He turned to the right through an open doorway and stopped before a man who was walking soberly up and down, his chin in his hand, his brows knitted.
“M. d’Aurilly,” he said, “here is a youngster who says he has a message for M. le Comte.”
My cheeks flushed at his tone, and I bit my lips to keep back the retort which would have burst from them.
D’Aurilly stopped abruptly in his walk and looked at me.
“That will do, Briquet,” he said to the sentry after a moment, and stood looking at me until the sound of his footsteps died away down the corridor. I could see that he was searching me through and through, and no whit abashed, for I come of as good blood as any in Gascony, I gave him look for look.
“So you have a message?” he asked at last.
“Yes, Monsieur,” I answered, and as I looked into his face I saw that his eyes glittered under half-closed lids, that his nose arched like an eagle’s beak, and that the thick moustachio could not wholly conceal the cruel lines of the mouth. Verily, I thought, there seem to be few pleasant people in the household of M. le Comte de Cadillac.