"So!" he said, "you have come back. And I perceive you have left the child behind you. 'Tis well. We have no room for children here. Come in, come in," he added snappishly.
Obeying an invitation given in none too warm a tone, St. Georges stepped through the wicket into the courtyard of the house—a place filled with snow that had lain there and increased since the first flake had fallen until now, and through which a thin path or track had been trodden from the great doorway to a smaller one that admitted to the house.
"You perceive," remarked Phélypeaux, "this is not a luxurious halting for you, monsieur. Still, the chevaux-légers are doubtless used to an absence of luxury."
"The chevaux-légers can make shift with anything," replied the soldier. And shrugging his shoulders as he spoke, he said: "Monseigneur l'Évêque, why do you imagine his Majesty has instructed me to become your guest for a night?"
He spoke without any of that respect usually shown to exalted members of the Church in the days of Louis XIV—a monarch who considered himself a religious man, and demanded that the most scrupulous reverence should be paid to all things ecclesiastical. But, in truth, the Bishop of Lodève was known to be a scandal to the sacred calling he belonged to; and now that Georges St. Georges was aware that he was face to face with the man himself, he refused to testify a respect for him that he could not feel.
"Humph! 'Monseigneur l'Évêque!' Ha! So you know me?" St. Georges nodded, whereon the other went on:
"Why the king has sent you to me? Eh? Perhaps because he thinks I am a good host, and because he loves his troops to be well treated. So I am a good host—only it is when I am in Languedoc. Here, malheureusement, I must be perforce a bad one. I have no servants but those I have brought with me, and one or two women who look after the château during my absence."
He had by this time opened the door into the house and escorted his visitor into a large, desolate-looking saloon, on the walls of which the damp hung in huge beads and drops, and in which there was a fireplace of vast dimensions that gave the appearance of never having had a fire lighted in it for years. Yet before this fireplace there stood two great armchairs, as though to suggest that here was a comfortable, cosey spot in which to sit.
"We'll soon have a fire," said this strange creature, whereon he went to a corner of the room in which hung some arras, and, thrusting it aside, brought forth a handful of kindling wood, two or three green, newly cut logs of different sizes, and some shavings, to which he applied the tinder after he had thrown them all pell-mell into the grate together. Then, when the smoke which arose from the damp green wood had thoroughly permeated the whole of the room, he looked round at St. Georges and said:
"You were gone some while to the 'Ours.' Did you sup there?"