"Humph!" muttered the latter, as he crossed to the inn; "the counsel is good. That seems no place for a child. Yet, how to leave it? Still, it is best. It has slept often with its nurse; maybe will sleep well at the inn. Well, let me see what the patronne is like."
He entered the yard of the "Ours" as he meditated thus, engaged a stall for the animal, saw it fed and rubbed down, and, then taking his pistols and the king's letter from the holsters and putting them in his belt, entered the hostelry and called for a cup of wine. And, seeing that the woman who served him—evidently the mistress from the manner in which she joked with one or two customers and gave directions to a servant—was a motherly looking woman, he asked her if the child he carried would be safe there for the night?
"A child," she exclaimed, "a child, and in the arms of a soldier! Why, sir, whence come you with a child? Mon Dieu! Of all burdens, soldiers rarely carry such as that."
"Nevertheless, I carry such a one. I am on the road from Pontarlier to Paris with my child, and I sleep to-night across the way at the Marquis Phélypeaux's. It seems there is no accommodation there for infants."
"Hein!" screamed the woman, turning to the customers in the place; "you hear that?" Then addressing herself to St. Georges, she continued: "You speak well, monsieur; that is no place for children. Ma foi! the old scélérat would be as like to eat it."
CHAPTER II.
HOSPITALITY!
"Who, then, is Phélypeaux?" asked St. Georges as he sat himself down in front of the great kitchen fire—the kitchen serving always in a Burgundian inn as the general place of assembly and serving room. "Who is Phélypeaux?"
"Monsieur does not, in truth, know?" she replied, with a glance at the customers—one a mousquetaire, himself en route to Bar to join his regiment, and the other evidently a shopkeeper of the place. The former had risen and saluted St. Georges as he entered, seeing by his accoutrements and lace[1] that he was an officer, and now he joined in the conversation deferentially.