“Yes, sir. The citizen apothecary himself bound up my hand for me this afternoon when I cut it. He is very skilful.”
“H’m,” said Trenchard sapiently.
He resolved to speak again with the shabby young man, whom he once saw glance laughing in his direction, but when he had finished the two companions were gone, and he did not see them again that evening. Later, when Trenchard tossed in the best bed, he regretted that he had not applied to the apothecary for some specific against its other occupants.
But the apothecary might himself have been in the same need, for the attic which he shared with his assistant was, outwardly at least, more objectionable than the Englishman’s chamber. Nevertheless, on one of the two pallets which lay, without bedsteads, on the bare floor, near the single dormer window, Louis slumbered peacefully. Château-Foix, on the contrary, was looking up at a solitary star, the only clear object in view either of his eyes or his mind. At last the star, much gazed at, seemed to grow dim and die out, and then all at once he was staring at it again, grown brighter than ever, with the consciousness of having heard a noise. He listened; it was repeated, and defined itself as a gentle tap at the door.
For a moment Gilbert hesitated, then he decided not to wake the sleeper, and got up to see what it was. When he drew back the crazy bolt he saw standing there, a lantern in her hand, the slatternly girl whose fingers he had that afternoon bound up. She looked completely terrified.
“Go! go at once!” she said in little gasps. “You will all be murdered, or put in prison at least! I heard them say it.”
“Who?” asked Gilbert, bewildered. “And who will be murdered?”
The girl glanced nervously down the staircase. “May I come in, lest they hear me?” And as the Marquis stepped back for her to enter she went on quickly: “You and your friend, the English milord. They say that he is one of Pitt’s spies, and that you are aristocrats. O mon Dieu, the dreadful threats! I heard them in the bar-room. They are half drunk; they will denounce you to the section if they are sober enough, but they will come up and cut your throats if they get drunker.”
At least the girl seemed persuaded of the truth of her warning. The lantern swayed in her shaking fingers, and her ugly features were rigid with terror. What she said was, moreover, quite possible. Gilbert went across to his cousin’s pallet.
But Louis had already struggled up on to his elbow. “What on earth are you doing?” he demanded in a sleepy voice. “Is this an assignation?”