"That," replied Andrew, "is what I do not know. Is what, indeed, at present, I seek to learn. Further, I know not where his house is, nor how to find entrance. Though soon I shall."
Then, at once, spurred on as it seemed to Andrew by a desire for vengeance on the part of Laurent particularly, who, he could see, nourished a personal hatred against the man, and, on the part of the others, by a desire for gain, and by greed, they gave him some information which he did not doubt was true.
De Bois-Vallée, they told him, lived not in Remiremont itself, but, instead, some four or five miles this side of it, and at the foot of the very mountain which they were now on the summit of. It was a large property known as Bois-le-Vaux, they said, consisting of wood and forest with a mountain stream through it that afterwards joined the Meurthe, and, in the middle of this estate and backed up by the hills, was the house itself.
"Of what description?" asked Andrew.
"Oh! for that, old, very old. Dating back, some said, to the days of Le Duc Thierry," the old man, Gaspard, answered. "Built partly of stone, hewn out of these mountains, one should suppose; a house long and low, with, above the ground floor, much wood. Also outhouses and stables and a granary, all of wood. Therefore," he added, "it would burn well."
"But not yet," answered Andrew, "not yet. That is for after I am gone, by which time he will be dead. For which reason there may be no necessity to thus destroy it. Are there any as bad as he to come after, and have all who went before him been equally as bad?"
No, they answered, each telling the tale by little pieces; no, there were none to come after of whom they knew; he had neither brother nor sister, nor was he married.
"Wherefore," interjected Gaspard, who seemed the most anxious for the destruction by flames of the mansion of Bois-le-Vaux, "it may properly be burned down. All of this country hate it and him; after his death we desire no memorial of his race."
"And of those before him. Were they like him?" again asked Andrew.
"His mother was a saint on earth," the old man said; "I knew her. And his father was harmless. The old wolf-blood of his forerunners has come out in him."