“Tonnerre!” exclaimed the Cossack chief. “Why not? She goes to Europe to sustain the Empire, while we French––”
“All the same, let her go. She will gain nothing there. Listen to me, monsieur. She leaves that he may not abdicate, while if I stay, she fears that––”
“Your wits, mon colonel, are entirely satisfactory. And so she invited me to go with her, and as first lady of her household, I could not refuse. I wonder, now, if Fra Diavolo would deign to capture just me, alone!”
The sharp look which Dupin gave her from behind the streams tumbling off his sombrero was the sixth of a half-dozen. But it was this last one that seemed to satisfy him.
“Put up the window, mademoiselle,” he said, “you’re getting wet.”
Ten minutes later Jacqueline felt the coach lurch heavily and sink to the hub on one side.
“Go on with your nap, Berthe,” she said to her one companion. “They’ll pull us out, as usual.”
The customary yelling and straining began, and men grunted as they heaved against an axle. After a long séance of such effort there came a sharp exclamation, like an oath, and the confusion fell to a murmur of dismay. Someone jerked open the door, and Dupin’s grizzled head appeared.
“Mademoiselle, I regret to have to announce that a wheel is dished in.”