At first I took them to be Cossacks, and was about to make off as best I could, when to my great surprise and pleasure I heard Léon himself calling to me. Never was the sound of a voice more welcome.
"Léon!" I cried, and running up to him I found myself surrounded by a squadron of the Red Hussars, in the midst of whom Léon himself was riding his own horse and leading mine by the bridle.
"Well met, my uncle!" says he, in his boyish humour. "And so they have not put the habit on you after all. We have ridden three leagues in quest of you, and here you are at the very door. Well, that is lucky, for time presses, and there is good work to do. What do you say to a little fire to warm our hands on such a night?"
I told him that it would be an excellent thing, though I had then no idea of his meaning. His affection for me was very real, and while his speech made a jest of it, I could see how pleased he was that he had found me in the wood.
"It was that cursed liquor of theirs," says he. "I have never drunk its like. We must have both dropped off like children in a cradle, and then they carried us out. I woke up God knows where, and but for these good fellows I might still be in the same place. Now we are going to teach the holy friars a lesson. Do you realise that they have got the woman and her jewels, and we must burn them out to recover them? Come along, my uncle. Here is an adventure that is only just beginning."
He seemed greatly pleased with himself, and rode jauntily enough, as though the event were greatly to his liking. My own wit had grown a little clearer by this time, and I could acquiesce in his determination to have it out with the monks. After all, they were not of our faith, and they had treated us very scurvily. The girl was no business of theirs, and even if the treasure had been looted, they had neither part nor lot in the affair. It was plainly our duty to teach them a lesson and to recover the property which the fortunes of war had bestowed upon us; and with this in our minds we rode up to the gate of the monastery and beat upon it insistently.
"No more of their liquor for me," says Léon, as he snapped a pistol in the lock of the great gate and then pulled their bell furiously. "We will give them a taste of our vintage and see if it goes to their heads. If it doesn't, I fancy that a prick from the point of a sword may well go somewhere else. Rest assured, dear uncle, we will have our pockets full of diamonds before the day breaks, and the girl upon my saddle-bow. Let us see what kind of a chant these holy men like best. Upon my word, they sleep like dogs after a hunting!"
Truly it was surprising that, after all the hullabaloo we had made, no one opened to us. The great monastery showed no light of any kind whatever. Both doors and windows were heavily barred as though against a ruthless invader, and listen as we might we could hear no sound within. The subterfuge merely angered Léon. He began to understand that even a squadron of hussars is powerless against a barrier of iron, and that for all we could do to the holy men within we might as well have been in Moscow. This, as I say, had not occurred to him before, and he now rode round and round the precincts as though there must be some loophole in the vast wall which defied us, some gate which the carbines of the company could force. We found none, and the men's chagrin was undisguised. They had been promised food and loot if they took the place, and yet they were as far from taking it as any child would have been.
"You will never do it," said I to Léon. "The wolves have gone to ground, and nothing but fire will fetch them out. You should have brought a gun, my boy; that would have made short work of them."
He admitted it, and began to blame himself for his stupidity. The artillery, according to his reckoning, was three leagues from the place; but presently one of the hussars remembered that some of Marshal Ney's guns were with the van of the rearguard and could not be farther than a league from the place.