"A thousand to one," I argued, "that Léon will not be alive when we return; and yet we might avenge him!"
A fierce desire to beat down the walls of the accursed house, to break in upon the assassins and to butcher them where they stood, possessed me as a fever. There was not a man in the regiment who, would not have galloped through the night at Léon's call. Pity then if we might not avenge him.
This I had said, when another whistle from the river bank arrested my attention and sent me back to Bardot.
He still lay behind the bush which concealed us, and his hand was raised in warning. When I rejoined him he pulled me down, and speaking in a deep whisper, he bade me listen. A boat was being rowed across the river. We saw it plainly in the moonlight—a great, crazy tub with a frail girl for its pilot. It touched the bank some fifty yards from the place where we lay hidden, and instantly the girl leapt from it and disappeared in the brushwood.
"Valerie St. Antoine, by all that is holy!" said I.
The mystery was deepening truly, but we were nearer to it now, and without a word spoken we strode toward the deserted boat and immediately began to pull across the river.
IV
Meanwhile what of Léon, and what had happened to him since he left Moscow? I shall try to tell you in a few words, that you may understand both his situation and ours, and the meaning of what was to come after.
The letter he had received was such as a soldier of the Guard is well acquainted with, and he discovered in it nothing out of the ordinary.
A pretty woman had fallen in love with him and desired to see him again. There must have been two hundred who had done that since he quitted Paris, yet few who drew from him so swift a response.