"On my word, this is excellent advice," said the marquis.
"Jean le Clope is a reliable man, and he has seen too many bloodless faces lying on the ground on battlefields to take fright at the task we propose to entrust to him."
"Let us make haste then," said Monsieur d'Ars, "for my steward is dying, as you know, and I would like to see him if it is not too late."
"Go, cousin," said the marquis. "Attend now to your own affairs; this concerns me and me alone henceforth!"
They shook hands. Guillaume joined his escort and rode away with them toward his château. The marquis and Adamas halted at La Caille-Bottée's cottage, where they did in fact find Jean le Clope, who warmly greeted his patron, calling him his captain.
As is well known, the convents were compelled to take charge of soldiers disabled in the service of the king or of the lord of the province. Most of the religious communities were bound by contract to receive and support these relics of the calamities of war, who were sometimes too fond of high living for pious recluses, sometimes much less corrupt than the monks themselves. However it may have been with the Carmelites of La Châtre, with whose history we are not here concerned, the secular brother Jean le Clope was but little hampered by the rules of the community, and, if he was not missing at meal hours, he was often missing at curfew.
While the marquis was explaining what he expected from his devotion and discretion, Adamas superintended the bringing of the body into the lonely house, and, a quarter of an hour later, Bois-Doré and his attendants rode homeward by way of La Rochaille.
They found Aristandre and his comrades profoundly disappointed at their inability to discover what had become of Sancho.
"Well, monsieur," said Adamas, "perhaps God wills it so! That villain will be very careful never to appear in a neighborhood where he knows that he is unmasked, and he would have been a source of fresh embarrassment to you."
"I confess that I have little taste for executions when my excitement has subsided," replied Bois-Doré, "and that I should have avoided witnessing that one. If I had turned him over to the provost, I should have been obliged to say what I had done with his master, and, as we must keep quiet on that point for the moment, it is all for the best. I consider my dear Florimond's death sufficiently avenged, although the Moor did not see which of the two, the master or the servant, dealt the blow that ended his poor life; but in affairs of this sort, Adamas, the most guilty, perhaps the real culprit, is he who directs it. The servant sometimes deems it his duty to obey a wicked order, and this fellow evidently did not act on his own account or profit by my brother's wealth, since he has remained a servant as before."