“If they go to Brussels to-morrow I go to-night,” Péron replied decisively; “and look you, Archambault, I will give you a letter to Père Antoine, he must go for me to monsignor; I cannot lose an hour, nay, not a minute.”
“You cannot go alone!” Archambault cried, with agitation. “Mère de Dieu! there will be four or six of them—you are mad.”
“So much the better—one can more easily outstrip four or six in a race for Flanders,” Péron replied, changing his uniform for a dark suit and a hallecrèt, while he talked.
“Ah, I see, you would be first in Brussels,” Archambault exclaimed; “but it will not do—one man cannot outwit them.”
He fell into meditation, sitting cross-legged on the high wooden stool; with all his flippancy and selfish greed, the pastry cook had still something of manhood left, and no little wit of a low order but keen enough to serve his ends.
“I have it,” he said, looking up and waving his hands. “Choin is at my place, a little tipsy, I believe, but in the morning he will be on his feet. The great hulk was asleep on the kitchen floor, and but for my haste to come here I would have had him thrown into monsignor’s gardens to cool; but, parbleu! he is the very man.”
“The man, if sober,” Péron replied, smiling, “but drunk—he is as useless as the figures on Maître Jacques’s great jacquemart!”
“He will be sober in the morning, and so will Matthieu and Jeannot,” said the pastry cook; “by your leave, therefore, M. Jehan, I will send them after you post-haste.”
“A useless trouble, good Archambault,” Péron replied, picking up his cloak and sword, being now fully equipped for his journey; “they would scarcely overtake me, and would doubtless get into a drunken brawl by the way.”
The cook shook his head. “Nay,” he said, “I have noticed that Choin does not drink when he has work; you used him before, and you may use him again. I can send him at daybreak, for I will set my fellows to work upon him with cold water enough to drown the fires out of his brain and belly.”