"Excellency, here the difficulties of the enterprise we are about to undertake really commence," the majordomo then said; "we must act with the most extreme prudence, and, above all, avoid revealing our presence to the invisible spies by whom we are indubitably surrounded."
"Fear nothing, we shall be dumb as fishes; go on ahead without fear; we will prowl on your track after the fashion of Indians on the war path."
The majordomo took the head of the file, and they began advancing rather rapidly along the paths which were entangled together, and formed an inextricable network for anyone but Leo Carral.
As we have already stated, the night was moonless, and the sky black as ink. A profound silence, interrupted at long intervals by the shrill cries of the night birds, brooded over the country.
They continued to advance thus without exchanging a word for about half an hour, and then the majordomo halted.
"We have arrived," he said in a low voice; "get off your horses, we are in safety here."
"Do you think so?" said Dominique; "I fancied during the march the cries of night birds too well imitated to be true."
"You are right," Leo Carral answered; "they are the enemy's sentries challenging each other; we have been scented, but thanks to the night and my acquaintance with the roads, we have temporarily, at any rate thrown out those who started in pursuit of us, they are seeking us in a direction opposed to the one in which we are."
"That is what I fancied I could understand," Dominique remarked.
The count eagerly listened to this conversation, but to no effect, for what the two men said was Hebrew to him; for the first time since he had been in the world, accident placed him in a situation so singular; hence he was completely deficient in experience; he was far from suspecting that he had passed through all the outposts of a hostile camp; had been within pistol shot of sentinels ambuscaded on the right and left, and had escaped death perhaps twenty times by a miracle.