"Who could give you no information as to the perpetrators?"
"They could describe them, but not tell their names. If this painful story interests you, I can tell it to you in all its details."
"Most certainly I am interested in your sorrows, and I am pleased to listen."
"Very well," said the marquis, pushing the chessboard away and drawing his chair nearer to the table, "I will tell you all that I learned from an investigation communicated to me by the curé of Urdoz."
"Urdoz? Where is Urdoz? I do not remember."
"It is a place that you must have passed through, if you have ever been to Pau."
"No, I came into France by way of Toulouse."
"In that case you don't know it. I will describe it to you directly. First let me tell you that my brother, being a simple gentleman and only moderately rich, but of an honorable name, noble in feature, of an amiable disposition, and a fine fellow if ever there was one, while sojourning in some Spanish city, which I cannot name, won the heart of a lady or maiden of quality, whom he married secretly against the will of her family."
"Her name was——?"
"I do not know. All this was an affair of the heart, as to which I never received his full confidence, and which I could not afterwards unravel. I found out simply that he eloped with his wife, and that they made their way into France by way of the Urdoz road, disguised as poor people. The lady was near her time. They were travelling in a small vehicle of shabby aspect, a sort of peddler's cart, drawn by a single horse, purchased on the road, whose gait hardly kept time with their impatience. However, they reached without hindrance the last Spanish settlement, and, after passing the night in a wretched tavern, my brother was imprudent enough to try to exchange Spanish for French gold, and to ask a soi-disant nobleman who was in the house, attended by an old servant, and who offered to assist him, if he could procure French money for a thousand pistoles.