“Here!” said the priest, recognizing him. “Go to your horses!”
As he spoke he was already untying one of the stable-lanterns that swung at the lamp-bracket. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his broad hat. He was quick and anxious.
“Wait here till I come back,” he said; and, keeping close to the wall, he disappeared among the low bushes.
There was another way in by a door half hidden among the ivy, which Jean used for his mysterious comings and goings, and of which the abbé had a key. He had brought it with him to-night by a lucky chance. He had to push aside the ivy which hung from the walls in great ropes, and only found the keyhole after a hurried search. But the lock was in good order. Jean, it appeared, was a careful man.
Susini hurried through a long passage to the little round room where the Count de Vasselot had lived so long. He stopped with his nose in the air, and sniffed aloud. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of stale tobacco, and yet there could be detected the sweeter odour of smoke scarcely cold. The room must have been inhabited only a few hours ago. The abbé opened the window, and the smell of carnations swept in like the breath of another world. He returned to the room, and, opening his lantern, lighted a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked round. Sundry small articles in daily use—the count's pipe, his old brass tobacco-box: a few such things that a man lives with, and puts in his pocket when he goes away—were missing.
“Buon Diou! Buon Diou! Buon Diou—gone!” muttered the priest, lapsing into his native dialect. He looked around him with keen eyes—at the blackened walls, at the carpet worn into holes. “That Jean must have known something that I do not know. All the same, I shall look through the house.”
He blew out the candle, and taking the lantern quitted the room. He searched the whole house—passing from empty room to empty room. The reception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-legged chairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolino and that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world the greatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: all alike smelt of mouldering age. In one room the abbé stopped and raised his inquiring nose; the room had been inhabited by a woman—years and years ago.
He searched the house from top to bottom, and there was no one in it. The abbé had failed in the two missions confided to him by Lory, and he was one to whom failure was peculiarly bitter. With respect to the two women, he had perhaps scarcely expected to succeed, for he had lived fifty years in the world, and his calling had brought him into daily contact with that salutary chastening of the spirit which must assuredly be the lot of a man who seeks to enforce his will upon women. But his failure to find the old Count de Vasselot was a more serious matter.
He returned slowly to the carriage, and told the driver to return to Olmeta.
“I have changed my plans,” he said, still mindful of the secret he had received with other pastoral charges from his predecessor. “Jean is not in the château, so I shall not go to St. Florent to-night.”