God knows what made him do so, for he had proposed to ride farther: but there was an aspect of peace and rural beauty and contented happiness about the whole place which might touch that latent poetry in his disposition already alluded to. Or it might be that all the fierce scenes of strife and turmoil and care and danger he had passed through in the last twenty months had made his heart thirsty for a little calm repose; and where could he find it so well as there? Expectation, however, is always destined to be disappointed. This is the great moral of the fable of life. The people of the house, who had much respect for a man who came with an armed servant and whose saddle-bags were well stuffed, gave him a clean, comfortable room looking over the court-yard to the river, and served him his supper in the chamber underneath.
It was night before he sat down; but, before the fine broiled trout had disappeared, the sound of several horses' feet was heard from the road, and then that of voices calling for hostlers and stable-boys.
Edward had easily divined, from his first entrance into the house, that this which he now occupied was the only comfortable public room in the inn,—although there was another on the other side of the passage, where neighboring farmers held their meetings and smoked their pipes. He expected, therefore, that his calm little supper would be interrupted, and was not at all surprised to see a gentleman of good mien, a little below the middle age, followed by two or three attendants, enter the parlor and throw himself into a chair.
The stranger cast a hasty and careless glance around, and then gave some directions to one of his followers in the French language. It was not the sort of half French spoken a good deal in the court of England at that time, but whole, absolute, perfect French, with French idioms and a French tongue.
As long as the conversation referred to nothing more than boots and baggage and supper and good wine, Edward took no notice, but went on with his meal, anxious to finish it as soon as possible. But soon after, when the person the stranger had been speaking to had left the room, that gentleman began a different sort of discourse with another of his followers, and commented pretty freely, and with some wit, upon the state of parties at the court of England.
"Your pardon for interrupting you," said Edward at once. "My servant and myself both understand French; and it would be neither civil nor honest to overhear your conversation without giving you that warning."
The other thanked him for his courtesy, adding, "You are a Frenchman, of course?"
"Not so," answered Edward. "I am an Englishman; but I have spent some time in France."
Next came a great number of those questions which nobody can put so directly without any lack of politeness as a Frenchman:—how long he had lived in France; whom he knew there; when he had left it.