Yet, still, he knew that there was no clue here; there were a score or more of such things lying on the table that had been taken from the necks of their dead owners, or picked up on the battlefield.
"A pretty toy," he said aloud, "the face of a beautiful woman. Nay!" holding up his hand at the exclamations of admiration which the man who owned this particular treasure instantly began to utter, while at the same time he loudly called attention to the splendid, the magnificent, the superb jewels with which it was surrounded. "Nay, friend, their value is known to me as well as the worth of the weapons. Yet I will buy it of you at a reasonable rate--though, since the battlefield has yielded you so many other treasures of a like kind----"
"But," burst in the present owner, "that is no battlefield spoil; 'tis better, much better--oh! far better--than any of the others. No simple officer dropped that, I will be sworn, but some great general in the retreat. Doubtless his wife, now, or----"
"No battlefield spoil! In the retreat!" Andrew repeated. "Fellow, what do you mean?"
But as he asked the question he knew there was a slight eagerness in his tone, though it was not apparent to their dull senses; senses blunted, too, by their desire to make a swift and profitable bargain. Also he felt a tremor at his heart! Not picked up on the battlefield! "Where then? Where?" he mused.
"Some half league from here--though now I think upon it, 'twas not the road along which either army retreated. But the track that leads to----"
"To!" exclaimed Andrew in his impatience.
"To St. Dié. The track known to many--across the mountains to Remiremont."
To Remiremont!
Andrew's pulse beat faster, almost his head swam, as he heard those last words. To Remiremont! Yet he had to pause to collect himself, to ask when and where and how, in connection with his enemy, he had heard that place mentioned? To pause while, all the time, his would-be vendor was dinning in his ears the value of the medallion portrait, especially the value of its setting, for which he would not take less than seventy écus. "From anyone else," he added, "though from the gracious Herr, because he was first come, he would take fifty."