Bois-Doré glanced furtively from the master lying stretched out on the bed, with an air of utter prostration, to the calm, stern, devout servant, whose monkish profile was outlined against the window.
"These are not highwaymen," he thought. "What the devil! this fair, slender young man, with an eye as soft as a girl's—To be sure, this morning when he was angry with the gypsies, and yesterday when he inveighed against the Moors, his expression was less benignant than usual. But this old esquire with the Capuchin's beard, who is so profoundly engrossed in his religious book—To be sure, there is nothing so like an honest man as a knave who knows his business! No, my penetration is insufficient in this matter, and we must weigh all the facts."
He returned to the pavilion, the whole of which was given over to his suite of apartments, each floor consisting of one large and one small room: on the ground floor, the dining-room with a serving-room; on the first floor, the salon and boudoir; on the second, the châtelain's bedroom and another boudoir; on the third, the large, so-called Salle des Verdures[21] which Adamas sometimes honored with the title of Salle de Justice; on the fourth, an unfinished, vacant room.
In the later building attached to the side of this pavilion, were the apartments of Adamas, Clindor and Jovelin, connecting with those in the grand'maison, as the marquis's little pavilion was ingenuously and in all seriousness called in the village.
He found his friends assembled in the Salle des Verdures, and not until then did he remember that in the general excitement the Moorish woman had been admitted to his chamber. He was grateful to Adamas for having transferred the session to some place other than his sanctuary. He saw that Jovelin was writing busily, and, not wishing to disturb him, he sat down and perused the letter written by Abbé Anjorrant to Monsieur de Sully, with the view of putting him on the track of Mario's family.
That letter was written very soon after Florimond's death, before Monsieur Anjorrant knew of the death of Henri IV. and Sully's fall from power; it had not reached its destination. This was a copy, which the abbé had retained and bequeathed to Mario with Florimond's unfinished letter. The abbé's letter—it was more properly a memorial—contained most precise details of the murder of the pretended peddler, as the abbé had received them from Mercedes, and as they had been confirmed by various incidents.
In it all there was nothing to fasten the guilt upon d'Alvimar and his valet. The assassins had not been discovered. Both, it is true, were minutely described in the Moorish woman's statement contained in the memorial; but, although she declared now that she recognized them, she might very well be mistaken, and her accusation was not sufficient to condemn them.
The Catalan dagger, the instrument of murder, being placed beside the one given by Lauriane to the marquis, was more convincing evidence. The two weapons were, if not identical, so nearly alike that at the first glance one had difficulty in distinguishing them. The initials and the device were made with the same instrument, and the blades were of the same make.
But Florimond might have been killed with a weapon stolen from Monsieur de Villareal, or lost by him.
Nor was there any proof that the one given by Lauriane to the marquis came from the Spaniard.