“Are you sure that the man was dead?” asked Luc.
“Monseigneur, perfectly sure. He lay in a strange attitude with one leg drawn up, and I crept into the barn and felt him, and he was cold with a hole in his chest and his fingers all cut where he had snatched at the sword—and with the dead frogs and snakes and that other corpse in the chair——”
The Marquis cut him short.
“You will be silent about this, Jean, until I give you leave to speak. I shall not go back—now, at least.”
Jean, only too thankful that his master was not returning to what he feared might be an outpost of hell, promised readily enough. They proceeded along the straight road, looking out for some habitation where they could ask their way.
Luc felt depressed, angry, and disgusted. He recalled the Italian’s healthy face, his callous laughter, then the hideous little scene in the barn with the horrid, foolish details of gross superstitions; lastly, the calm serenity and haughtiness of the young man whose careless manner had so deceived him; and the priest, in his mockery of a habit—Luc wondered that he had not made some attempt at a disguise. Evidently all of them had been pretty sure that they were not likely to be interrupted; yet Monsieur Armand, as he called himself, had not seemed very concerned, or even surprised, at being discovered.
Luc, riding along in the grey dawn, wearily followed out the consequences of this wretched episode.
They would burn or bury the body of the foreigner, who was not likely to be missed; they would probably burn the whole barn—who was to make inquiries?
M. de Richelieu did not keep such a strict policing of Languedoc that it was likely to come to his knowledge—well, the affair would be hushed up; and he, Luc, saw no good in soiling his lips by any mention of it, though he felt himself no longer bound by the promise he had made the young rake.
The Italian charlatan had perhaps not lived so as to look for a better end—let the whole thing be forgotten; Luc only hoped that he might meet neither priest nor patron again.