Mario ran like a cat down the narrow staircase leading from the inn-keeper's chamber to the salle d'honneur, and found himself in the presence of Captain Macabre, who, at the same instant, entered the room with heavy tread by the staircase leading from the kitchen.
Lieutenant Saccage was also there with two or three other men of no less hang-dog aspect.
The appearance of the individual who bore the sinister name of Macabre was less repellent at first glance than his lieutenant's. The latter was treacherous and cold, with a fiendish laugh. Macabre's face indicated nothing worse than brutalized roughness, which strove to appear imposing.
There was no place for a smile upon that face stupefied by fatigue and dissipation. The muscles seemed to have grown stiff—to have become ossified; the light eyes had a fixed stare like eyes made of enamel. The strongly marked features resembled Mr. Punch's, minus the animated, sly expression. A great scar across the jaw had paralyzed one corner of the mouth and separated in a curious way the gray and red beard, which seemed to grow in different directions, and, as to part of it, against the grain. A great hairy mole emphasized the hump on his protuberant nose. His fingers bristled with gray hair to the roots of the nails.
He was short and thin, but broad-shouldered, and as compactly built as a wild-boar, with tawny coat and head set close to the shoulders, like that beast. He seemed quite old, but his appearance still indicated herculean strength. His rasping voice, still maintained at the high pitch of the military officer in the mouth of a fool, sounded like a peal of thunder with the influenza, and made the glasses on the table rattle.
He was dressed after the fashion of the reitres, in doublet and tassets of buffalo hide, with a helmet and breastplate of burnished iron. A wretched stripped black feather adorned that black and gleaming helmet. He carried the stout, broad German sword, against which the glistening lances of the French gendarmerie were easily shattered; flint-lock pistols, to which our soldiers foolishly preferred the old match-lock weapons; a short musket, and a bandoleer with little black leather compartments containing charges of powder and ball, completed this individual's campaign equipment.
His private escort, or, as was still said at this time, his lance, consisted of two carbineers for scouting purposes, and two coutilliers, who performed the twofold functions of pages and farriers.
He had also seven soldiers, well-armed and mounted as light-horse, who never left him, and who were the cream of his cornette, or troop of picked men. We may translate, in this way, by equivalent terms to those in use at this time, the titles and different grades of this tribe of foreign adventurers, whose organization, equipment and staff each leader modified, according to his whim or his power.
Mario had not erred in estimating at twenty-five men the band accompanying the captain, added to that already at the inn under his lieutenant's command.
"Here's a filthy tavern!" cried the captain in a disdainful tone, scraping the heavy soles of his great muddy boots on the clean and glistening rungs of a walnut chair. "What sort of a fire is that for travellers by night? Are you short of wood in this barrack?"