"A great friendship!" exclaimed the bishop. "A great friendship! To his influence you doubtless owe your commission, obtained, I think you said, in '74, the year before Turenne's death."
"Doubtless. So my father said. He died in the same year as the marshal."
"In battle, too, no doubt?" Then, seeing a look upon the other's face which seemed to express a desire for no more questioning—though, indeed, he bowed gravely at the question if his father had died in battle—monseigneur with a polite bow said he would ask him no more impertinent questions, and turned the conversation by exclaiming:
"But you must be weary, monsieur. You would rest, I am sure. I will call Pierre to show you to your room. Your child will sleep better at the 'Ours' than you will do here, since my accommodation is not of the first order, owing to my being able to inhabit the house so little. But we have done our best. We have done our best."
"I thank you," the soldier said, rising from his chair. "Now, monseigneur, let me pay my farewells to you at the same time I say 'Good-night.' I propose to ride to-morrow at daybreak, and if possible to reach Bar by night. Though much I doubt doing so; my horse is jaded already, and can scarce compass a league an hour. And 'tis more than twenty leagues from here, I take it."
"Ay, 'tis. More like twenty-five. And you have, you know, a burden. You carry weight. There is the little child."
"Yes, there is the child."
"You guard it carefully, Monsieur St. Georges. By the way, you have not told me. Where is its mother, your wife?"
Again the soldier answered as he had before answered to the watchman's wife—yet, he knew not why, he felt more repugnance in speaking of his dead wife to this strange bishop than he had when addressing either that simple woman or the landlady of the "Ours." But it had to be done—he could not make a secret of what was, in fact, no secret. So he answered, speaking rapidly, as though desirous of getting his answer over:
"She is dead. Our existence together was short. We loved each other dearly, but it pleased God to take her from me. She died a year after our marriage, in giving birth to the babe."