"You are mistaken. They are in the mountains, putting all to fire and sword. Above all, to fire. And among those whom they will slay--they know her not--is Baville's child. Friend, as you have loved ones of your own, help me to a fresh horse. This one is spent."
"It is," the warder said, all action now and regarding the smoking flanks of the poor beast. "Antoine, petit," he called, "out of your bed, dindon. A bucket of water, quick. And for you, monsieur, a sup," whereon he ran into his lodge and came back carrying a great outre, from out of which he poured a flask of amber-coloured liquor. "'Tis of the best," he said, and winked as he did so. "Hein! 'tis Chastelneuf. Three years in vat. Down with it."
"Another horse, another horse!" Martin exclaimed after he had swallowed the wine and thanked the man. "In Heaven's name put me in the way of that. I must on--on."
"Off!" said the man to a boy who had now come from his lodge, half dressed, as though he had but just tumbled out of his bed; a boy who was by now holding a bucket to the horse's thirsty mouth. "Off, Antoine, to the Jew. He has the cattle. If you have money," he added to Martin. "Without it you will get naught from any of his tribe."
"I have enough. Fifty gold pistoles."
"Show them not to him, or he will want all. Bargain, traffic, marchandise. 'Tis the only way."
Led by the boy and leading now the steed, with the warder calling after him that it was strange he had heard naught of what he related, "for his part, he believed he was misinformed, and that Montrevel and Julien were doing nothing but eating and drinking up all in the land like locusts," Martin went down the street, none of the inhabitants seeming yet awake. It was as silent and empty as a deserted city.
In front of a cross in a market place--a cross which the fiery Anjou had caused to be erected there to remind the Jews of their fathers' sins, as he said--the boy paused and, pointing to a house with large, capacious stables by its side, observed:
"'Tis there that Elie lives. Beat him up, monsieur, beat him up," and Martin, following his advice, seized the great copper knocker and hammered with it as lustily as, some minutes earlier, he had hammered to arouse the warder.
Because strange, fantastic thoughts and memories come to us even in our most bitter moments, so to Martin there came now the thought that the face, which a moment later appeared at a window above, might well have served Nokes, the comedian, whom he had often supped with at Pontac's, for a model of the apothecary in Mantua. A face lean and hatchet-nosed, fleshless almost as the face of one dying of starvation, the eyes deep sunken above the beak-like nose.