'Count, you are a villain!'
'M. le Commandant!' exclaimed at least twenty men, knitting their brows and grasping their swords.
'Nay, nay, gentlemen,' said he, 'be patient, I pray you. It is a defect of these Scots to be somewhat plainly spoken.'
'And to be truthful too,' I said with ungovernable fury, while unsheathing my sword; but it was barely out of the scabbard, when the rough hands of a crowd of armed men were laid upon me, and in a moment, I was denuded of my belt, with its poniard and pistols, my sword and purse of fifty crowns, with all my papers, while I was held so tightly on every side that I could scarcely breathe. My despatches were valueless to me, compared to the farewell note of Marie Louise.
'M. le Comte,' exclaimed a bloated young subaltern of Swiss, who was looking over my papers; 'here is a letter from mademoiselle—'
'De l'Orme—yes!' interrupted De Bitche, abruptly, closing the sentence to mislead his followers, and snatching the letter of Louise from the startled discoverer thereof; 'and on peril of your life,' he added, 'speak no more of it.'
'But, M. le Comte,' said Schreckhorn, 'here is a protection from Monseigneur le Duc, dated at Nanci, yesterday. This, at least, must be respected.'
'A vile forgery—put it in the fire; every spy has papers.'
The protection given to me by Vaudemont was then consigned to the flames.
'And here is a despatch sealed with the royal arms of France, and addressed to M. le Chevalier Hepburn, marshal and general of the Scots with the army of the Rhine.'