"Nor do I, monsieur! I put her and her child, all alone, in the small cellar, where they are quite comfortable, I assure you; they do not seem accustomed to such good quarters, poor things! And yet this Mercedes is as neat and clean as one can be in such poverty. Moreover, she is not at all ugly."
"I trust, Adamas, that you will not impose upon her destitute condition. Hospitality is a sacred thing!"
"Monsieur is making fun of a poor old man! It is all very well for monsieur le marquis to have virtuous principles! For my part, I assure you that I have little need of them, being no longer tempted by the devil. Besides, the woman seems very honest, and she does not take a step without her child clinging to her dress. She must have run other risks than that of pleasing me too much, for she has been travelling with gypsies who passed through this region to-day. There was a large party of them, partly Egyptians, partly picked up here and there, as their custom is. She says that the vagabonds were not unkind to her, so true it is that beggars stand by one another. As she did not know the roads, she followed them, because they said they were going to Poitou; but she left them to-night, saying that she had no further need of them, and that she had business in this province. Now, monsieur, that is another thing that seems very strange to me, for she would not tell me why she acted so. What do you think of it, monsieur?"
Bois-Doré did not reply. He was sleeping soundly, despite the noise that Adamas made, to some extent wilfully, to force him to listen to his story.
When the old retainer saw that the marquis had really set out for the land of dreams, he tucked in the sheets carefully, placed his beautiful pistols in the morocco bag hanging at the head of his bed; on a table at his right, his rapier unsheathed and his hunting knife, his folio edition of Astrée, a superb volume with engravings, a large goblet of hippocras, a bell with its hammer, and a handkerchief of fine Holland linen saturated with musk. Then he lighted the night lamp, blew out the multicolored candles, and arranged at the foot of the bed the red velvet slippers and the dressing-gown of flowered silk serge, light-green on dark-green.
Then, as he was about to leave the room, the faithful Adamas gazed at his master, his friend, his demigod.
The marquis, with all his cosmetics washed off, was a handsome old man, and the tranquillity of his conscience imparted a venerable air to his face as he lay asleep. While his wig reposed on the table, and his garments, stuffed to conceal the hollows that age had made in his shoulders and his legs, lay scattered about on chairs, the angular outlines of his great body, shrunken to half its size, could be traced under a lodier or coverlet of white satin, with coats-of-arms in silver purl in relief at the four corners.
The headboard of the bed, a single panel ten feet high, as well as the fringed tester connected therewith in the shape of a canopy, was also of white satin stitched on thick wadding, and with large silver figures in relief. The inside of the bed-curtains was of similar material; the outer surface was of pink damask.
In that comfortable and sumptuous bed, that strongly-marked, venerable face, martial still with all its gentleness, with its moustache bristling with curl-papers, and its night-cap of wadded silk in the shape of half a mortar, embellished with rich lace that stood erect like a crown, presented a most singular combination of absurdity and austerity in the bluish light of the night lamp.
"Monsieur is sleeping quietly," said Adamas to himself; "but he forgot to say his prayers, and it is my fault. I will do it for him."