"Then what?" said Guillaume.
"Then," said the marquis, ingenuously, "I became weak and idiotic, and I fled to avoid seeing anything more."
"Well," said Monsieur Robin, "however it may be, and whatever may be there, we will go to examine that hovel and ransack it from roof to cellar, if need be, to see what it conceals, and what sort of people it shelters."
Guillaume advised waiting until nightfall, and taking all manner of precautions, in order to make sure of discovering the object of these mysterious meetings.
Faraudet had given Monsieur Robin precise information as to the hour at which the tumult began, and the moment that it became certain that those strange noises were not a pure product of the imagination of terrified peasants, it was impossible not to see, in their regularity and their persistent recurrence, a deliberately adopted plan to spread terror abroad and turn it to advantage in one direction or another.
Monsieur Robin observed moreover that, according to the farmer, this performance had been going on at Brilbault only about two months, that is to say since the time fixed by Guillaume and the marquis as the period of D'Alvimar's death.
"All this," he said, "reminds me that, on the day that I arrived at Coudray, last week, I met at several places on the road, at varying intervals, groups of evil-appearing people, who did not look like peasants or bourgeois or soldiers, and whom I was surprised not to recognize. Ascertain from your servants whether they have not met similar folk in your neighborhood of late."
Several servants were summoned. Bois-Doré's and Guillaume's agreed in saying that, within a few weeks, they had seen many suspicious persons prowling about in the woods and the unfrequented roads of La Varenne, and that they had wondered how those strangers could earn a living in such lonely regions.
Thereupon they remembered numerous thefts that had been committed in farm-houses and barnyards roundabout; and lastly, La Flèche's face had reappeared, with other outlandish faces, at fairs and markets in the towns nearby. At all events they believed that they could swear that a certain mountebank, an irrepressible chatterer, dressed in various disguises, was the same fellow who had prowled about between Briantes and La Motte-Seuilly for several days, at the time of Mario's recovery.
The result of all this information was that they concluded that they had to deal with the most suspicious and artful genus of vagrants and bandits, and they took measures to obtain possession of their secret without giving the alarm.