"Couldn't you get absolution for breaking a promise?"
"No, Monsieur. I am not that kind of Catholic. It is only heretics who break their promises, and take money for it—like Judas Iscariot."
Joseph did not charge at this red rag, but looked so utterly depressed that Innocentina's eyes relented.
"Very well," I said. "You deserve praise for your loyalty. I ought not to have tried to corrupt it. But, you know, I shall find out in the town, or at the railway station."
Innocentina smiled. "I do not think so, Monsieur."
"We shall see," I retorted. "Joseph, where is the railway station?"
Joseph pointed, accompanying his gesture with directions. Then he offered to be my guide, but I refused his services and left him with Innocentina, having bidden him call at my room in the hotel for instructions later.
But the prophecy of Innocentina the Seeress was fulfilled. I could learn nothing of the Boy or his movements, at the gare of Chambéry. Several trains had gone out, bound for several destinations in different directions, during the past three hours, and no one answering the description I gave of the Boy had been seen to leave.
Sadder, but no wiser, I returned to the Hôtel de France, and asked if a youth of seventeen, "with large blue eyes, chestnut hair which curled, a complexion tanned brown, a panama hat, and a suit of navy-blue serge knickerbockers," had lunched there.
The answer was no. Such a yoking gentleman had not come to the hotel, nor had he been noticed in the town, either with or without a young woman and a couple of donkeys.