“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers, if it interests you to know.”
“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”
His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.
“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charming citoyennes were so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of the way.”
“And shall you stop here to-night?”
“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant interrogatory.
“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.
Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.
As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men are ci-devants—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably, from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing our wives and daughters. . . .”
The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still further maddened the denunciator.