"Farewell, Monseigneur, and again my thanks. How long do you give me to return?"
With a groan and an upward gesture of both hands, de Commines turned back towards the gate, now about to be shut.
"How can I tell? A month! Eternity! What I said at the first I say at the last—All is as the King wills"; and with that, which was at best a boding God-speed, we rode on our way.
So long as Plessis gates remained in sight Martin kept his distance, nor, though I reined Roland back to a walk, would he decrease the space between us by a yard. But once a turn of the path, following the river's curve, hid the towers, he drew up beside me.
"Oh, Monsieur Gaspard, Monsieur Gaspard, but this is good!"
"What is good?" answered I, holding out a hand to him, which he caught and gripped. I knew his meaning very well, but I knew, too, that it would please him to speak his thought.
"That we two should be out in the sweet air together, free from the rat-trap, free from the fox with the wolf's claws, free from—from—that accursed house in the Rue Trois Pucelles, and riding—God knows where! What does it matter!"
"Why, what was that house to you?" I asked, remembering a hint Monseigneur had let fall.
"It was very near being my last rise in the world, and having seen two poor souls travel by that upward road I had no heart to follow them. One was a common thief, a foul-mouthed gutter bully, and I daresay deserved his hanging. But the other was a miserable, white-faced wench who stole a loaf out of sheer hunger, and that she might keep her wretched soul one day longer in its starved body. They hung them together—for company, I suppose; and it made me sick to see a coarse, burly scoundrel climb out of that upper window and slide down the rope to the girl's shoulders and crouch there, tailor-fashion, laughing at some vile jest of his own making, while she—quite right, Monsieur Gaspard, I'll say no more about it. It's a filthy way by which to send even a sinner to God."
The picture Martin conjured up was a horrible one, and remembering Mademoiselle's grim suggestion as to what her fate would be if found in Tours, I had made an involuntary gesture of loathing. If it had sickened Martin to see an outcast of the streets—a nameless wretch haled from God knows what cellar of vice—suffer such foul indignity, how would the spirit not revolt to think of that pure, sweet face——