"Not if I can help it!" he cried through his teeth, and with a sweep of his weapon he made a savage thrust at the young girl's breast Coquelin, with equal speed, sprang before her, threw out his arm, and took the blow just below the elbow.
"Thank you, M. le Vicomte," he said, "for the chance of calling you a coward! There was something I wanted."
Mlle. de Bergerac spent the night at the château, but by early dawn she had disappeared. Whither Coquelin betook himself with his gratitude and his wound, I know not. He lay, I suppose, at some neighboring farmer's. My father and the Vicomte kept for an hour a silent, sullen vigil in my preceptor's vacant apartment,—for an hour and perhaps longer, for at the end of this time I fell asleep, and when I came to my senses, the next morning, I was in my own bed.
M. de Bergerac had finished his talk.
"But the marriage," I asked, after a pause,—"was it happy?"
"Reasonably so, I fancy. There is no doubt that Coquelin was an excellent fellow. They had three children, and lost them all. They managed to live. He painted portraits and did literary work.
"And his wife?"
"Her history, I take it, is that of all good wives: she loved her husband. When the Revolution came, they went into politics; but here, in spite of his base birth, Coquelin acted with that superior temperance which I always associate with his memory. He was no sans-culotte. They both went to the scaffold among the Girondists."