“And who will lead them?” cried the Breton. “Their priests? M. de Château-Foix, pardon me for saying so, but you are a true Liberal—you are refusing to look facts in the face. I will grant you, since you are so convinced of it, that your tenantry, if ever they take up arms, will do so of their own volition; but to whom will they come when they have got together the obsolete fowling-pieces and the pitchforks which will be their arms—in place of the muskets with which you might have furnished them? Why, to you, to their natural leader! And what will you do then? Let them go alone to be mown down by the regulars because the Prussians——” He checked himself. “I sincerely beg your pardon, Monsieur le Marquis, for I believe that I was on the verge of insulting you, which was not my intention, since I know that you would not let them go alone.”
Gilbert put his elbows on the table and his head between his hands. “You speak nothing but the truth,” he said dejectedly. “God knows what will happen; I don’t.”
La Rouërie studied him for a moment as he sat there, and then, casting a sudden glance towards the bed in the corner, crossed the room towards it. “Can’t you get to sleep?” he asked. “I am afraid we are doing a devilish amount of talking.”
“Oh, I find it rather soothing than otherwise,” was the Vicomte’s reply, and La Rouërie, coming back, observed in a low tone to Gilbert: “I like that cousin of yours, M. de Château-Foix. He has the pluck of twenty.” To which Gilbert replied rather stiffly that the Marquis was very good. . . .
It was in truth their conversation which had kept Louis awake, for he was deadly weary, and had already dozed off only to reawaken, after a more or less troubled period of slumber, to hear the sound of voices, and to see, through the faded green serge curtains of the bed, a close-framed, ill-lit picture of his cousin, seated by the table, his chin propped on his hands, listening, while La Rouërie, all animation, passed in and out of the canvas. And once—or was he dreaming?—they were both standing up, and with them was a man in the dress of a peasant, talking as eagerly as they.
These snatches of oblivion deprived him of all sense of time, and when he closed his eyes on the last occasion it might have been midnight, or ten o’clock, or the small hours. It was consequently a surprise to him when he was awakened by a hand on his shoulder, and, looking up, found Gilbert standing over him and the room full of daylight.
“Is it morning?” he exclaimed. “Where is M. de la Rouërie?”
“Gone,” said Gilbert briefly. “It is half-past six. Are you well enough to go on, do you think? We ought to get to Entrammes or beyond to-day.”
“I am sorry not to have said farewell to ‘Monsieur Milet,’ that excellent surgeon,” remarked Louis later, as they moved off, with their unwilling hostess scowling at them from the doorstep. “And, by the way, hadn’t you a third person participating in your interminable conversation last night, or was I dreaming?”