Denys uttered an exclamation, then hugged him warmly—and, quite overcome by this sudden turn of youthful affection and native grace, gulped out in a broken voice, “Railest on women—and art—like them—with thy pretty ways. Thy mother's milk is in thee still. Satan would love thee, or—le bon Dieu would kick him out of hell for shaming it. Give me thy hand! Give me thy hand! May” (a tremendous oath) “if I let thee out of my sight till Italy.”
And so the staunch friends were more than reconciled after their short tiff.
The next day the thieves were tried. The pieces de conviction were reduced in number, to the great chagrin of the little clerk, by the interment of the bones. But there was still a pretty show. A thief's hand struck off flagrante delicto; a murdered woman's hair; the Abbot's axe, and other tools of crime. The skulls, etc., were sworn to by the constables who had found them. Evidence was lax in that age and place. They all confessed but the landlord. And Manon was called to bring the crime home to him. Her evidence was conclusive. He made a vain attempt to shake her credibility by drawing from her that her own sweetheart had been one of the gang, and that she had held her tongue so long as he was alive. The public prosecutor came to the aid of his witness, and elicited that a knife had been held to her throat, and her own sweetheart sworn with solemn oaths to kill her should she betray them, and that this terrible threat, and not the mere fear of death, had glued her lips.
The other thieves were condemned to be hanged, and the landlord to be broken on the wheel. He uttered a piercing cry when his sentence was pronounced.
As for poor Manon, she became the subject of universal criticism. Nor did opinion any longer run dead in her favour; it divided into two broad currents. And strange to relate, the majority of her own sex took her part, and the males were but equally divided; which hardly happens once in a hundred years. Perhaps some lady will explain the phenomenon. As for me, I am a little shy of explaining things I don't understand. It has become so common. Meantime, had she been a lover of notoriety, she would have been happy, for the town talked of nothing but her. The poor girl, however, had but one wish to escape the crowd that followed her, and hide her head somewhere where she could cry over her “pendard,” whom all these proceedings brought vividly back to her affectionate remembrance. Before he was hanged he had threatened her life; but she was not one of your fastidious girls, who love their male divinities any the less for beating them, kicking them, or killing them, but rather the better, provided these attentions are interspersed with occasional caresses; so it would have been odd indeed had she taken offence at a mere threat of that sort. He had never threatened her with a rival. She sobbed single-mindedly.
Meantime the inn was filled with thirsters for a sight of her, who feasted and drank, to pass away the time till she should deign to appear. When she had been sobbing some time, there was a tap at her door, and the landlord entered with a proposal. “Nay, weep not, good lass, your fortune it is made an you like. Say the word, and you are chambermaid of 'The White Hart.'”
“Nay, nay,” said Manon with a fresh burst of grief. “Never more will I be a servant in an inn. I'll go to my mother.”
The landlord consoled and coaxed her: and she became calmer, but none the less determined against his proposal.
The landlord left her. But ere long he returned and made her another proposal. Would she be his wife, and landlady of “The White Hart”?
“You do ill to mock me,” said she sorrowfully.