“Did you mark how he called him to him?” cried the sergeant of the watch when the footsteps of the couple were no longer audible on the strand. “Are not they a demon and his familiar?”
“Phooh!” puffed Jacqueline. “I felt smothered! I never marked our two lodgers so carefully. ‘Tis a bad thing for us women that the Devil can wear so fair a mien!”
“Ay, cast some holy water on him,” said Tirechair, “and you will see him turn into a toad.—I am off to tell the office all about them.”
On hearing this speech, the lady roused herself from the reverie into which she had sunk, and looked at the constable, who was donning his red-and-blue jacket.
“Whither are you off to?” she asked.
“To tell the justices that wizards are lodging in our house very much against our will.”
The lady smiled.
“I,” said she, “am the Comtesse de Mahaut,” and she rose with a dignity that took the man’s breath away. “Beware of bringing the smallest trouble on your guests. Above all, respect the old man; I have seen him in the company of your Lord the King, who entreated him courteously; you will be ill advised to trouble him in any way. As to my having been here—never breathe a word of it, as you value your life.”
She said no more, but relapsed into thought.
Presently she looked up, signed to Jacqueline, and together they went up into Godefroid’s room. The fair Countess looked at the bed, the carved chairs, the chest, the tapestry, the table, with a joy like that of the exile who sees on his return the crowded roofs of his native town nestling at the foot of a hill.