“One night three years ago, monsieur, as you were about to retire, you fancied you heard a noise in the room above your apartment—an empty attic. You called a servant, and taking your pistols, mounted to that attic. In one corner you found a man crouching. You dragged him forth and discovered him to be a creature who should have been employed about the kennels. He excused himself by saying that one of the maids was his mistress; that, on leaving her, he had lost his way and stumbled into that attic. The maids did indeed sleep on that floor, and you found that he was the lover of one of them. But when she shrieked that it was not with her he spent his nights, you did not heed her; you thought it merely some excuse—some lie. So you contented yourself with kicking the fellow down the steps of the terrace and warning him never again to set foot on your estate.”
“Well?” said M. le Comte, somewhat impatiently.
“Well, that fellow was Goujon, monsieur. Had you passed your sword through him, all this would never have occurred. Six months later you were walking in your woods down yonder by the river when you came suddenly upon a man setting a snare. I chanced to pass at the moment, and we brought him with us back to the château, though he resisted desperately. Three hares were found upon him——”
“I remember,” broke in his master. “Did I punish him?”
“Yes, monsieur,” answered Pasdeloup quietly. “You caused him to be stripped and beaten, then branded on both shoulders with the fleur-de-lis.”
“Ah,” said the other with a sigh of relief, “I am glad I was so lenient. I might have decreed the gallows or the wheel for the miserable poacher.”
“Oui, dà, monsieur,” agreed Pasdeloup, with a grim smile; “but after all your leniency was a mistake, for there are some men who prefer the gallows to the white-hot iron. That miserable poacher was one of them—although he has since become Citizen Goujon, a deputy of the Republic.”
“A deputy?”
“He arrived at Dange a week ago.”
“You mean it is he who aroused these peasants?”