At last the coachman spoke, saying:
"Monsieur le Duc, we cannot go on. We--we dare not. This is no duty of ours--to risk our lives in this manner. No wages could repay us for doing that."
"You must go on," Desparre said; "you must conduct me to the gates of Marseilles. Beyond that, I demand no more. It is but two leagues. If I were not sick and ailing I would dismiss you here and walk into the city by myself. As it is, you must finish the journey. If not----"
"If not--what?" demanded the footman, speaking in an almost insolent tone. "What, Monsieur le Duc? These are not feudal days; there is no law here. All law is at an end, it seems; and--and, if it were not, no law ever made can compel us to meet death in this manner."
For a moment Desparre looked at the man, his eyes glistening from his pallid, sickly face; then he turned and slowly entered the berceuse. A moment later he reappeared upon the platform, and now he held within his hands his pistols. He was, however, too late. Whether the men had divined what he had intended to do and how he meant to coerce them, or whether they recognised that here was their chance--which might be their last one--of escaping from the horrible prospect of death that lay before them, at least they were gone, They had fled away the moment his back was turned, and had disappeared into a copse lying some distance from the road.
There remained, however, as Desparre supposed, Lolive; yet he recollected that he had been in neither of the compartments as he entered them. In an instant he understood that the man was gone too. The fellow had slid into the inn while his master had been inside the berceuse, and, passing swiftly through it to the back, had thereby made his own escape also.
Desparre would, in days not so long since past, have given way to some tempestuous gust of rage at this abandonment of him by his domestics, creatures who had been well paid and fed, even pampered, since they had been in his service and since he had come to affluence--he would have endeavoured to find them, and, had he done so, have shot them there and then. Yet now, either because he was a changed man in his disposition, or because his physical infirmities were so great, he did nothing beyond letting his glance rest upon the people standing about who had been witnesses of the desertion. Then, at last, he addressed them, haltingly--as he ever spoke now--his words coming with labour from between his lips.
"I am," he said, "a rich man. And--and--there is one in Marseilles dear to me, one whom I must save if I can. She is," the pause was very long here, "my daughter, and--heretofore--I have treated her evilly. I--must--see her if she be still alive; I must see her. If any here will drive my carriage to Marseilles he may demand of me what he will. Otherwise, I, feeble, sick, as I am, must do it myself. Even though I fall dead from the box to the ground in the attempt."
For a moment none spoke. None! not even those who, a short time back, would have performed so slight a task for a crown and have been glad to do it. Not one, though now, doubtless, a hundred pistoles would be forthcoming if asked from a man who travelled in so luxurious a manner. They knew what was in that city; they had had awful experience of the poisonous, infected breath that was mowing down thousands weekly, and, though some in the little crowd were of the poorest of the population, they did not stir to earn a golden reward. Gold, precious as it was, fell to insignificance before the preservation of their lives, squalid though such lives were even at the best of times.
A silence fell upon all; there was not one volunteer, not one who, meeting Desparre's imploring glance as it roved over them, responded to that glance. Then, suddenly, the man who had conversed with Desparre when last he appeared on the platform, the one who had taken no notice of the coins the latter tossed out in his sudden fit of charity, came forward and took in his hands the reins lying on the backs of the horses, and began to mount to the deserted box.