"Where is that fellow who took your place?"
"That's what I want to know, master. Took my place, did he? I'd place him, I would, making an old man drunk to rob him of his bread."
"Who was he?"
"No good, that's all I know. Gipsy scum! rob an old man, would he? I'll gipsy him if I find hair or hoof of him. Lord, master, how liquor do make a man thirsty. You must ha' found it so yourself?"
CHAPTER XV
A QUESTION IN THEOLOGY
Never was the cynical philosophy of the proverb, Virtue is its own reward, made more clear than in the indifference with which Amboise greeted the rescue of the Dauphin. Of course, there are those who contend that virtue is in itself a sufficient reward, but there is certainly a second possible reading, and this reading La Mothe found true. No one said what a fine fellow he was, no one stared in admiration of his promptitude or in awe of his courage. Amboise was cold, chillingly cold.
Hugues, perhaps, was an exception, and if Villon was right Ursula de Vesc had also been deeply moved. But that, La Mothe told himself as he wandered disconsolately through the dull and gloomy corridors of the Château, might have been nothing more than the transitory emotion of an excited girl moved to an expression repented of when the mood cooled.
So, as lovers have done ever since this hoar world was young, he gave himself up to melancholy and found, as more than lovers have found, a satisfaction in a grievance. Then, while he fumed, three half-grown spaniel puppies, followed more sedately by a full-grown brother, came scampering around a corner, and the lover remembered he was a sportsman who loved dogs as well as little Charles himself. It was almost the sole hereditary trait in the lad, and the passion for animals was as strong in the Dauphin as it was in the King.
Round the corner, full cry, they raced, slipped upon the smooth flags, tumbled, rolled over, and with a common impulse fell upon one another as puppies will in the sheer joy of living. But the elder dog, if he still had the heart of eighteen or younger, did not forget he was twenty-four with responsibilities and a dignity to maintain. Passing gravely by the riot of paws and flapping ears he halted a yard away from La Mothe, pushed out a sensitive, twitching nose, sniffed the hand held out in greeting and as gravely licked it. Love at first sight is not confined to humanity, and thanks to the unfailing miracle of instinct the dog makes fewer mistakes than man. Inside of two minutes he had adopted La Mothe into the very select circle of his friends.