“It was loaned me,” he continued, “in order that I might bring some great news here the quicker.”
Fear resumed possession of the peasantry.
“Is the enemy in the city?” anxiously inquired some of the more timid.
“Yes; but not the enemy you refer to. This is the former lord of the manor, the Duc de Sairmeuse.”
“Ah! they said he was dead.”
“They were mistaken.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, I have not seen him, but someone else has seen him for me, and has spoken to him. And this someone is Monsieur Laugeron, the proprietor of the Hotel de France at Montaignac. I was passing the house this morning, when he called me. ‘Here, old man,’ he said, ‘do you wish to do me a favor?’ Naturally I replied: ‘Yes.’ Whereupon he placed a coin in my hand and said: ‘Well! go and tell them to saddle a horse for you, then gallop to Sairmeuse, and tell my friend Lacheneur that the Duc de Sairmeuse arrived here last night in a post-chaise, with his son, Monsieur Martial, and two servants.’”
Here, in the midst of these peasants, who were listening to him with pale cheeks and set teeth, Father Chupin preserved the subdued mien appropriate to a messenger of misfortune.
But if one had observed him carefully, one would have detected an ironical smile upon his lips and a gleam of malicious joy in his eyes.