"I thank you, I thank you, most noble Marquis," said the other, with a curious sort of roguish twinkle of the eye; "I will take you at your word, and will rid your streams of all those gudgeons which you dislike so much, but which I dote upon. Oh, 'tis a dainty fish--a gudgeon!"
At about one o'clock my horse was ready, and I took leave of the Marquis--I cannot say with feelings either of reverence or regard; and I have always found it an invariable fact, that when a man has amused us without gaining our esteem, and pleased without winning our confidence, there is something naturally bad at the bottom of his character, which we should do well to avoid.
As I mounted my horse, I remarked that my worthy valet, Houssaye, had imbibed as much liquor as would permit him to stand upright, and that it was not without great difficulty and scrupulous attention to the equipoise that he at all maintained his vertical position.
"Your servant is tipsy," said the Marquis; "you had better leave him here till he recovers his intellects."
"I am as sober as a priest," hickupped Houssaye, who overheard the accusation the Marquis brought against him, and repelled it with the most drunken certainty of his own sobriety. "Monseigneur, you do me wrong. I am sober, upon my conscience and my trumpet!" So saying, he swung himself up to his horse's back, and forgetting to wait for me, galloped on before, sounding a charge through his fist, as if he was leading on a regiment of horse.
The Marquis laughed; and once more bidding him adieu, I followed the pot-valiant trumpeter, who, without any mercy on his poor horse, urged him on upon the road to Lourdes as fast as he could go. Very soon, I doubt not, he quite forgot that I was behind, for, following much more slowly, as I did not choose to fatigue my jennet at the outset, I soon lost sight of him, and for half an hour perceived no traces of him whatever.
I have heard that the effect of the fresh air, far from diminishing the inebriation of a drunkard, greatly increases it. Probably this was the case with Houssaye; for at the distance of about four miles from the park of the Marquis, I found him lying by the side of the road, apparently sound asleep, while his horse was calmly turning the accident of his master to the best account, by cropping the grass and shrubs at the roadside.
This accident embarrassed me a good deal, for I had set out late; and, of course, I could not leave the poor drunkard to be gnawed by the bears, or devoured by the wolves, whose regard for a sleeping man might be found of somewhat too selfish a nature. After having shaken him, therefore, two or three times for the purpose of recalling him to himself, without producing any other effect than an inarticulate grunt, I returned to a village about a mile nearer Bagneres, and having procured the aid of some cottagers, I had the overthrown trumpeter carried back, and left him there in security, till he should have recovered from the state of intoxication in which he had plunged himself.
All this delayed me for some time, so that it was near four o'clock before I again resumed my journey. Nor was I sorry, indeed, that the sun had got behind the mountains, whose long shadows saved my eyes from the horizontal rays, which, as my way lay due west, would have dazzled me all along the road had I set out earlier. In about two hours it began to grow dusk, and I put my horse into a quicker pace, lest the family at the château should conclude that I intended to remain another night. There was one person also that, I knew, would be anxious till they saw me return safe; and, for the world, I would not have given Helen a moment's unnecessary pain. What made her suspect the Marquis of any evil designs towards me I knew not, but I knew that she did suspect him, and that was sufficient to make me hurry on to assure her of my safety.
There is a thick wood covers the side of the mountain about five miles from the Château de l'Orme, extending high up on the one hand, very nearly to the crest of the hill, and spreading down on the other till the stream in the valley bathes the roots of its trees. In a few minutes after I had entered this wood, I suddenly heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs close behind me--so near, it must have sprung out of the coppice. I instantly turned my head to ascertain what it was, when I received a violent blow just above the eyebrow, which nearly laid my skull bare, and struck me headlong to the ground, before I could see who was the horseman.