“Thank you, citizen,” said Mr Trenchard, feeling in his pocket. “And see that some one attends to her.”
“If you want that done,” advised the Vicomte, “you had better come round with me, for most likely there will be no one there, and though I would willingly stable her myself—she is such a fine beast—I am not sure that I can manage it with one arm.”
Again the Englishman looked at him, puzzled at his easy tone, and the assignat between his finger and thumb dropped back into his pocket as he postponed the moment of recompense. Louis smiled to himself as he turned to lead the mare; the little interlude was amusing him.
The stables, by courtesy so called, rather resembled a cowshed, and the yard was thickly coated with various kinds of mire. Here, however, they did find a sort of ostler, to whom Trenchard a little suspiciously committed his mare.
“I shall come out again shortly and see that you have done your work properly,” he said severely, and turned round to reward the holder of his steed, fully expecting, he knew not why, to find that he had slipped away. But the shabby young man stood at his elbow in evident expectation of some recognition of his services.
“Thank you, citizen,” he said gravely, pocketing the blue ten-sol assignat without a trace of embarrassment. “If you want me to hold your horse again you will find me in the inn.” And with a species of salute he made his way over the filth of the yard towards the hostelry. The Englishman could have sworn that he laughed softly as he went.
By nightfall the traveller was fully persuaded that the Soleil d’Or was the worst of all the bad French inns on which he had chanced on his wanderings. He had the best bedroom, which a tawdry attempt at magnificence rendered only the more squalid, and he had also the best supper, a meal which merely awoke in him a wonder as to what the worst could be like. To eat it he sat at the best table spread with the best cloth, and he thought as he surveyed the latter article with disgust, that the inferior tables at the other end of the room, which had none, might be preferable. And while he studied these less lofty places he saw at one of them, to his surprise, his acquaintance of the afternoon. Seen without his hat, in a room full of bucolic faces, he—as well as the companion with whom he shared the little table in the corner—seemed to the Englishman oddly incongruous with his clothes. The discrepancy was so striking that he became curious.
“Can you tell me who those two men are—who is the one with his arm in a sling?” he demanded of the frowsy wench who removed the thing of skin and bone, afloat in tepid water, which the inn termed a roast chicken.
She followed his glance. “He is a druggist’s assistant, Monsieur. The other is the apothecary.”
“Apothecaries!” repeated Trenchard, incredulously, looking at them again.