"They are being saddled this very moment," replied Jean Saxe, and then went on to paint out La Mothe's roseate dreams with the dull brush of realities. "Always," and he lowered his voice as he spoke, "whether by day or by night, you will find a horse waiting ready for your ride to Valmy. It is in the stall facing the door, monsieur. By day the stable is open and not a soul will ask questions; saddle and bridle for yourself, then ride like the devil. By night send a stone through the last window on the left and I will be with you in three seconds. Don't spare your spurs, that's my advice."
"God send the man who rides to Valmy nothing redder than a red spur." Villon had joined La Mothe at the window, and was peering out at the stir of men and horses in the open space between the inn and the castle gates.
"Saxe, what man of yours is that who is bitting Grey Roland? I don't know his face."
"A stop-gap," answered Saxe indifferently. "A gipsy fellow I think he is by his colour. Old Michel is drunk in the barn—how I don't know, but the Chien Noir is none the better for it—this other is in his place for the day. I don't know his name, but he can tell a horse from a mule by more than the ears, and that's name enough for me."
"Who owns that huge, raw-boned roan?" asked La Mothe. "Surely I have seen it somewhere."
"It's as much a stranger to me as Michel's stop-gap," answered Saxe. "It's not one of the regular Château horses, that's certain. The beast has power in his legs, rough though he is. Why do you ask, monsieur?"
But La Mothe had already lost his interest. "There is the Dauphin," he said. "Come, let us go."
But his gaze was fixed on the slender figure which followed the boy, and the eyes of a much greyer age than a lover of twenty-four with the heart of eighteen might well have lit into a sparkle at the charm of the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey or sunny lightness. She was Ursula de Vesc, and that was enough, Ursula de Vesc, the woman of a single hour of life, and yet the one sweet woman in the world.
"A lover's arms ought to be her riding-chair," said Villon, following La Mothe's gaze. "No, there is no offence meant," he added, as Stephen's face reddened with the beginnings of umbrage. "She may be a spitfire and not love Francois Villon, but she is a good girl, and my four eyes are not blind."
"Your four eyes?" questioned La Mothe; "most of us have but two."