Now how all was changed!
I had been discovered, and all but expelled from the chateau, while she had been abducted, and by such an abductor! Now I was riding side by side with a French officer—his comrade for the time—and he was that Chevalier de Boisguiller, who had been so long my bête noire.
At the very moment I was thinking of all these things, what might be the peril, the suffering, the desperate extremity of Jacqueline! Where was she, and how circumstanced in the power of a brutal galley-slave? Might we not be riding in the wrong direction, and thus, perhaps, abandoning her to the very fate from which we sought to save her? The stars that looked so brightly down on us looked also down on her; but where was she? Every thought and fear was maddening!
When contrasted with my own keen anxiety, the sang-froid of the French officer piqued and annoyed me. It was well for me, however, that he was ignorant of the relation that existed between his cousin and me, as, apart from any fancy he might himself have had for her, in the extreme ideas of difference of rank, religion, and so forth, cherished by the French noblesse, he would have thought no more of quietly pistolling me, on the score of presumption, than of shooting a weasel. Thus my ill-concealed emotions he put down in his own mind as the result of humanity and gratitude.
"Mon ami, I rather like you," said he, as we rode on together; "I can see that you are courageous, and that is better than to be merely brave."
"Merely brave—what do you mean, chevalier?"
"We French make a distinction in this matter. A soldier may be very brave, and yet on some occasions may not have courage to manifest his bravery."
"I confess that this paradox is too subtle for me, especially at such a time. But tell me, chevalier, was this wretch of whom we are in pursuit ever in the French service?"
"I regret to say that he was, until discharged with a cartouche jaune as an incorrigible rogue."
He referred to the discharge printed on yellow paper and given to those men of the French army who were dismissed under sentence of degradation.