(8)
That evening, as they took their places for supper in the inn at their next stage, two gentlemen sitting at the neighbouring table finishing their wine suddenly broke off their conversation, stared, and then, after exchanging glances, got up and left the place altogether.
For a moment Aymar looked as though he had been struck in the face; the next, he was showing an almost uncanny self-control. "I knew that man quite well once," he observed quietly, and did not refer to the incident again during the meal.
But that he hardly slept that night Laurent was aware. As they were dressing next morning he suddenly remarked rather drily, "I imagine that yesterday evening, Laurent, must have finally convinced you of the baselessness of your optimistic views about Royalists. You see that what damns me—what you overlooked, perhaps—is my own men's having shot me." And as Laurent admitted that this rumour had, unfortunately, had two months in which to spread uncontradicted, Aymar retorted, "Rumour! It is fact! And how, therefore, can it ever be contradicted?"
So little answer could Laurent find to this observation that he resolved to go to no inn at all that day—the last of their journey—but procured instead a fowl and a bottle of wine to take with them. They halted, therefore, at midday on the outskirts of a wood, and, leaving their chaise, turned a little way up a grassy road which penetrated it. Laurent, bearing the provisions, selected a suitable spot for their consumption under a spreading tree. "You can lean your back against this very comfortably," he announced to his friend, who was following with bent head.
Aymar looked up—and advanced no more.
"Don't you like this place?" asked Laurent, surprised at his expression.
"It is . . . too much in the shade, don't you think?" replied L'Oiseleur indistinctly. "If you don't mind—there—more in the open." And, without waiting for consent, he turned and went back towards the grassy road.
They ate and drank, and did not hurry to regain their vehicle. Aymar indeed disposed himself on his face, his head on his bent left arm, and Laurent settled himself against a fallen tree trunk, and pulled his hat over his eyes. He was a little sleepy.
"I did that man who would not stay in the same room with me a service once," came Aymar's voice suddenly. "He said that he should never forget it. But I suppose the debt is liquidated by my death. For, as I say, Laurent, it was not Pont-aux-Rochers which put an end to me, but the Bois des Fauvettes. I shall erect a tombstone there one day to L'Oiseleur.—But who, I wonder, am I?"