“You have not!” said the Miller, apparently surprised. He thought for a moment, and then added—“Oh, you reckon on your innocence. But let me tell you, Sir Count, that there is both danger and uncomfort in a long imprisonment.”
“I know it,” answered De Blenau; “but I would rather submit to both, than cast a suspicion on my honour and my innocence, by attempting to fly.”
This was a sort of reasoning the other did not understand; and his lip curled with a slight expression of contempt, which would have showed itself more visibly, had not De Blenau’s rank, though a prisoner, kept the bourgeois in awe. He turned away, however, seemingly with the intention of quitting the room; but when he got to the other side, he paused, laid his hand upon his brow, and after thinking for a moment, again came back to De Blenau. “I advised you for your own good, Monsieur le Comte,” he said; “and though you will not escape from the dangers of accusation, I will give you the means of proving your innocence. In that room,” and he pointed to the small door in the partition, “you will discover two packets of papers exactly similar: take either of them, and in that you will find enough to disprove all that your enemies will say against you.”
“But,” said De Blenau, “what right have I to possess myself of papers belonging, probably, to another?”
“Pshaw!” cried the Miller, “one would think that your neck itched for the axe! Are you not in my house? Do not I bid you take them? Of course, you will not betray me to the Government; but take the papers, for I give them to you.” And making a sign to De Blenau to use all speed, he went to the door which opened on the road. Before he passed it, however, he turned to the prisoner once more and cautioned him to make no noise, nor regard any thing else in the room, but after having taken one of the packets from the table on which they were placed, to quit it as speedily as possible. The precaution, however, was useless; for before De Blenau had even time to determine upon any line of conduct, the Officer again entered the room, and, balancing himself as well as he could, contrived to arrive at the table after many a zig-zag and many a halt. He had precisely reached that pitch of intoxication, when a man, having for some time suspected that he is tipsy, finds out that such a supposition was entirely a mistake, and that he never was more sober, or more in his senses in his life: consequently, he had not the slightest objection to drink a bottle of the vin de Saint Peret, which the miller set before him; although the Burgundy he had already imbibed had very considerably dulled his perception, and detracted from his locomotive power. The wine, as it creamed and sparkled in his glass, was raised to his head with increased difficulty at every renewed draught; and at last, feeling something the matter with him he knew not what, he started from the table, made an effort to reach a chair by the fire, but receiving instantly internal conviction of the impossibility of the attempt, he cast himself upon the bed behind the screen, which happened to be nearer at hand, and in a few minutes all his senses were steeped in oblivion. Immediately the Miller raised his hand, pointed to the door in the partition, and left the apartment as if unwilling to witness what was to follow.
De Blenau paused for a moment to reflect on this man’s conduct; but however extraordinary it might be, he could see nothing to prevent his possessing himself of papers which, he was assured, would prove his innocence of the crimes with which he was charged—a thing not always easy to the most guiltless. Accordingly, rising from his seat, he passed by the bed where the Officer lay snoring in the fulness of ebriety, and opened the door in the partition to which he had been directed. The room with which it communicated was small, and dimly lighted by a lamp that stood flickering on a table, as if it scarcely knew whether to go out or not. Near the lamp lay various implements for writing, together with two papers, one folded up and marked, the other open, and seemingly hardly finished. Around were scattered various basnets and vials, which appeared to contain the medicaments for a sick man; and on one of the chairs was thrown a long sword, together with a poniard and a brace of pistols.
De Blenau advanced to the table, and taking up the open paper, ran his eye hastily over its contents. In so doing, his own name met his sight; and forgetting the caution he had received, to make speed and quit the apartment as soon as he had possessed himself of it, he could not refrain from reading on:—“With regard to Monsieur the Count de Blenau,” the paper proceeded, “the prisoner feels perfectly convinced that he was always ignorant of the treaty and the designs of the conspirators. For, Monsieur de Cinq Mars particularly warned him (the prisoner) never to mention the circumstance before the Count, because that he was not to be made acquainted therewith; and moreover——”
As De Blenau read, a deep groan came upon his ear, evidently proceeding from some one in the same room with himself, and, holding up the lamp, he endeavoured to discover who it was that had uttered it; but in lifting it suddenly, the feeble light was at once extinguished, and the whole chamber remained in darkness, except where a gleam came through the doorway of the other room.
“Godefroy! Godefroy!” exclaimed a faint voice, “do not put out the light—why have you left me so long?—I am dying, I am sure I am dying.”
“I will bring another light,” said the Count, “and be with you instantly.” And forgetting, in the hurry of the moment, his peculiar situation, and the caution which ought to have accompanied it, he hastened into the other apartment, where the Officer still lay undisturbed in his drunken slumbers, and taking one of the rosin candles from the table, returned to give what succour he could to the person whose faint voice he had heard.