BOOK II: TWO YEARS LATER
The Belovéd Traitor
BOOK I: BERNAY-SUR-MER
— I —
THE HOUSE ON THE BLUFF
It was a wilder gust than any that had gone before. It tore along the beach with maniacal fury; and, shrieking in a high, devilishly-gleeful falsetto, while the joints of the little inn, rheumatic with age, squeaked in its embrace, shook the Taverne du Bas Rhône much after the fashion of a terrier shaking a rat. And with that gust, loosening the dilapidated fastening on the casement, a window crashed inward, shattering the pane against the wall.
"Sacré bleu!" shouted a man, springing smartly to his feet from his seat at a small table as the rain lashed him. "What a dog of a night!"
Against the opposite wall, tilted back in a chair, Papa Fregeau, the patron, a rotund, aproned little individual, stopped the humming of his song.