“That, I think, is impossible,” said Gaston. And then Valentine, attracted by voices, entered. Marthe slipped out with the speed of a swallow.
“O my darling, my darling, why have you come?” was her first word.
“Ma foi,” returned her husband gaily, as he kissed her, “apparently to be put aside, like the bread, in that sort of garde-manger there—at least that is the fate Mlle Marthe designs for me. It is not my intention, however.”
“Gaston, you should not have come!” she repeated.
“Chère amie, what a greeting. Shall I go again?”
“No, no!” She clung to his arm. “You did not know, of course!”
“No,” he said more gravely, “I did not know. It would not have been right for me to come if I had known.” Then he looked at her and said with deliberation, “I am only thankful that I did not know!”
They had all of them that in the blood which responds to the stimulus of danger, and supper, in the room whence the hiding-place was so easily accessible, was a cheerful meal. During its course news arrived that the soldiers had left the village altogether. So they went with light hearts into the salon, and there the leader of Finistère told the three ladies what in a few days they would divine for themselves, the outline of the main plan of campaign, and why what seemed the hazardous plan of attacking large towns instead of small was the better. For in the small towns, violently anti-royalist as they were, the whole population was armed, and the walls and palisades loopholed, so that the losses involved in the capture of such positions, without artillery, would be too heavy to be worth incurring. On the other hand the large towns were often insufficiently garrisoned for their size, opinion therein was more moderate, sometimes secretly favourable, and even an unsuccessful attack would benefit the Royalists, since it would draw off the Republican troops from the country districts.
“It is a good thing that we are going to begin fighting in earnest,” he concluded, “for soon I shall not be able to hold in my followers. Do you know what Lucien and Roland did the other day for a wager—strolled, in full uniform, through the streets of Lanvennec in broad daylight! The Republicans were just changing guard, and were, I fancy, too much petrified by their audacity to take in what was happening. Anyhow my young sparks had completed their promenade before the chase began. It was I who had them arrested.”
He had barely finished the story when steps came flying down the passage, the door was unceremoniously opened, and Marthe’s maid, shutting it behind her, stood there panting. “Soldiers!” she gasped, “they are in the house . . . some in the garden . . . they are coming here now.” Indeed, through the closed door could clearly be heard approaching feet and the clank of spurs—feet that cut off the possibility of swift retreat to the cachette in the dining-room. In another moment their owners would be in the salon.