Having mounted, they rode on at a slow pace towards the bridge.
“Had you any opportunity of testing my opinion respecting that Monsieur de Tourville? He is no more a Frenchman than I am a Dutchman,” questioned Monsieur Gramont’s companion.
“I am quite satisfied he is an Englishman,” returned Monsieur Gramont, “and so is that big fellow that wants to pass for a dummy. I tried the fellow with a sentence of English, holding my landing-net to him, and he started back as if something had exploded under his nose; he looked as if he could have swallowed me.”
“Curse him and his master to boot. If they had not been in the way, we should have performed our job in first-rate style, and got possession of all those papers. Besides, that ruffian when he put the landing-net over my head, pulled it back with such tremendous force against my throat, that I doubt if ever I shall recover the power of swallowing; every time I eat it jolts my whole body, and gives me great pain. I’ll cut his windpipe for that yet.”
“He certainly made a very ingenious weapon of his landing-net. I was watching the whole proceeding from the thicket on the river’s bank, and must say they managed to kill two of your comrades and make the rest take to flight in a masterly manner. The master is a very powerful young man.”
“Nevertheless,” returned the man named Augustine, savagely, “I should have had my knife in his heart, but for that villain with the landing-net. Curse him, he kicked me over afterwards, saying something in a strange language, which I afterwards recollected must be English. Why the fellow let me go I cannot imagine.”
“Neither can I,” replied De Gramont, “when I saw you run off, I turned back to the river, and picked up the stranger’s fishing-rod, and caught a fine trout, which was taking the world easy under the bank with a red hackle in his gills. I bagged several others, waiting till the owner came back for his rod, hoping to pick some kind of intelligence out of him in order to discover what he thought of the attack upon Monsieur Plessis and family; but that beautiful girl getting away and uttering the shriek she did ruined all—it reached the stranger’s ears.”
“That was a bungling affair of one of the men,” said Augustine; “she sprang out of the carriage at the opposite door, and would have got off into the wood, only I sent Jacques after her; the Englishman then came up and ran him through the body, though Jacques fired his pistol full in his face.”
“Well, it’s no use our talking this matter over again; the project failed and there’s an end of it. The only thing to be feared was Jean Plessis being able to discover any of the robbers, as they were considered; but to my surprise, he appeared very glad to hush up the affair, and let it be thought that the fellows were a remnant of the Chouans band, that committed so many outrages here two years ago; and the terribly disturbed state of all the roads and districts of France at this moment, with brigands and robbers of all kinds, caused the affair to be thought lightly of, and no search, except by the peasantry, was made after the fugitives.”
“No fear of their tracing them,” said Augustine, “my comrades understood, if the thing failed, they were to make their way into Brittany as fast as they could, so I had no apprehension on that account. I confess I thought it was all up when that villain of an Englishman had me in his grasp—as well try and get out of a vice. But why not at once denounce them as spies, and get them arrested and sent to Paris?”