“I have been glad of your company, Humphrey Trail. I know you are honest, and just now there is no one else in all Paris whom I can trust.”
“Tha can trust me, lad, that tha can. Can tha remember the name of my lodging? Listen well. It is in the Impasse Forné, just off the rue Saint Antoine, the fourth turn to the right from the corner where the women are making waste for the guns. Tha cannot fail to find it and any message sent there will reach me. I shall not be far and I shall be ready to serve tha well.”
Humphrey shook Lisle’s hand warmly there in the shadow of the great house.
“In all Paris, you are my only friend, Humphrey Trail,” Lisle answered.
Chapter IX
DIAN
Dian the shepherd was always welcome at Mother Barbette’s fire. He sat before it on a chilly December afternoon, warming his hands at a piled-up heap of briskly-burning fagots. Jean had gathered them during the autumn months, and they were stacked in neat piles in the back of the room. Rows of onions were strung on lines along the ceiling, and there were bowls of good fig jam on a shelf by the door. Mother Barbette was prepared for what she felt would be a hard winter.
She was making a stew for supper and she was wishing that it might have been a good one. She peered into the stock pot above the fire and sighed. It was not a savory mixture that met her eyes. The stew was made mostly of hot water and pieces of bread, to which she had added a cup of milk, some salt, and a bit of garlic. She had eaten the stew all her life, but always before she had had a piece of veal or pork to add to it.
Dian the shepherd sniffed the stew delightedly.
“It’s good to know that there will soon be food,” he said. He often shared the Barbettes’ supper and sometimes brought them meat which he obtained from a near-by farmer in exchange for some of the cheese for which he himself was famous. He never ate meat but seemed content always with a cup of milk and a piece of bread.