"Why, they have split your head open, my poor fellow!" said the marquis, passing him his lace handkerchief, which he found in his breeches, pocket.
Mario seized the handkerchief, which might have betrayed their identity, and tossed it into the hot fire, where it disappeared like a match.
Jacques wiped away the blood and bandaged his wound with a napkin.
"Don't be alarmed," he said to Madame Pignoux; "they let me come here to wait on them. Give me the larding-knife, and the night shall not pass without my ripping up one or two of them."
"You will get yourself killed," said the hostess. "That's of no consequence," replied Jacques.
"But you will get us killed too!"
"Jacques," said the marquis, "look at this child, and don't say a word. Help him to leave this house, if you can, but be prudent if you love us."
Jacques glanced stealthily at Mario, and, without making any reply, went several times to the pantry, as if to attend to his duties, but in reality to examine the men who were pacing back and forth with the regularity of machines.
"Those German curs!" he said to the marquis, "they don't eat nor drink nor sleep until they have killed off everybody."
"And they know what discipline means too!" rejoined the marquis, with a sigh. "Ah! it can't be denied that the reitres are stout soldiers! If our good Henri had had ten thousand of them, he would have been king ten years earlier!"