"You are not De Roquemaure?"
"Nay."
"What affair is it then of yours?"
St. Georges explained briefly to him how he had met the dead man's wife and pitied her, and asked where she was.
"Mad," the man said. "Quite mad. Her brother keeps her." Then he muttered: "A curse on the De Roquemaures, and on him above all! His father was bad; he is worse."
"You need curse him no more," St. Georges answered; "he is dead!"
"Dead is he? Then he was the last; the woman counts not. Dead! Oh, that she whom he injured so could understand it! Dead, thank God! I would it were so with all aristocrats! France has suffered long."
A hundred years almost were to elapse ere the peasant's hopes were to be partly realized, and others like the De Roquemaures to meet their reward; but none foresaw it in those days. Later the clouds gathered, but even then the fury of the coming storm was not perceived.
"Give her this," said St. Georges, putting some of his few remaining pieces in his hand, he having provided himself with French gold for his English guineas.
"Or give it to the brother who has charge of her. I, too, have suffered at the hands of the De Roquemaures."