Devoted, sacred, dim and melancholy,
The only joy of all the joys I cherished,
Thou hast not perished.” —Robert Bridges.
Fortune was markedly kind to the fugitives. The bar-parlour of the Soleil d’Or, whence indeed a considerable clamour was heard to issue, lay in the front of that hostelry; the stable-yard was completely deserted, and its deep dirt silenced the horses’ hoofs. In less than ten minutes after their reunion, the three men were riding unchallenged along the high-road, into which the lane from the yard had conveniently and unostentatiously conducted them.
“We are in luck, by Gad!” observed Mr Trenchard feelingly. “I cannot be sufficiently grateful for your warning, Monsieur. May I, without indiscretion, know whom I have the privilege of addressing? My name is Trenchard.”
“Forgive me,” said Louis, “and let me present my cousin, the Marquis de Château-Foix. He has a fancy for travelling as a druggist, and you may address him as the Citizen Pomponne. I am the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, his incompetent assistant.”
“If I had only known——” began the Englishman in some confusion.
“You would not have given me ten sols,” finished Louis, laughing. “I know it, but I shall not return your bounty.”
The Marquis remarked politely that he was glad to make Mr Trenchard’s acquaintance, though in unpropitious circumstances, and asked him how long he had been in France.
“Quite long enough,” responded Mr Trenchard, “to see that this country, if you will pardon my saying so, is in a devilish bad way,” and launched therewith into a narrative of his experiences in Burgundy and Franche-Comté, in the course of which he contrived to impart to his companions a quantity of information about their native land, and to lay open his own convictions with no sparing hand. Louis, who rode in the middle, listened with concealed amusement; the Marquis scarcely attended to the sense of Mr Trenchard’s utterances, but the knowledge that somebody whom he did not know was talking copiously about matters which did not personally concern him, acted as a kind of vent for his own thoughts, and he let his mind float away on the stream. There reached him occasional fragments of what appeared to be a lecture on the English constitution—“the noblest in the world,” on the English system of local government, “which is just what your lower orders need,” on the duty of a landlord to reside on his estate. “I am so thankful,” he heard Mr Trenchard to remark at this point, “to think that the tradition of our own country is that the interests of the landlords are the interests of his tenants, and that he is always welcome back among them. Here, I am afraid it is very different; and this, it seems to me, is the root of the whole trouble.”