His countenance fell at that.
“What!” he cried, losing his Roman manner, “do you tell me you have never seen him?”
But once, I explained, when he marched into Glasgow city with his wild Highlanders and bullied the burgesses into providing shoes for his ragged army.
“Ah,” said he with a clearing visage, “that will suffice. Must point him out to me. Dixmunde parish was a poor place for seeing the great; 'tis why I go wandering now.”
Father Hamilton's hint at politics confirmed my guess about Miss Walkinshaw, but I suppose I must have been in a craze to speak of her on any pretence, for later in the day I was at Thurot's lodging, and there must precognosce again.
“Oh, mon Dieu, quelle espièglerie!” cried out the captain. “And this a Greig too! Well, I do not wonder that your poor uncle stayed so long away from home; faith, he'd have died of an ennui else. Miss Walkinshaw is—Miss Walkinshaw; a countryman of her own should know better than I all that is to be known about her. But 'tis not our affair, Mr. Greig. For sure 'tis enough that we find her smiling, gentle, tolerant, what you call the 'perfect lady'—n'est ce pas?And of all the virtues, upon my word, kindness is the best and rarest, and that she has to a miracle.”
“I'm thinking that is not a corsair's creed, Captain Thurot,” said I, smiling at the gentleman's eagerness. He was standing over me like a lighthouse, with his eyes on fire, gesturing with his arms as they had been windmill sails.
“No, faith! but 'tis a man's, Master Greig, and I have been happy with it. Touching our fair friend, I may say that, much as I admire her, I agree with some others that ours were a luckier cause without her. Gad! the best thing you could do, Mr. Greig, would be to marry her yourself and take her back with you to Scotland.”
“What! byway of Paris in Father Hamilton's glass coach,” I said, bantering to conceal my confusion at such a notion.
“H'm,” said he. “Father Hamilton and the lady are a pair.” He walked a little up and down the room as if he were in a quandary. “A pair,” he resumed. “I fancied I could see to the very centre of the Sphinx itself, for all men are in ourselves if we only knew it, till I came upon this Scotswoman and this infernal Flemish-English priest of Dix-munde. Somehow, for them Antoine Thurot has not the key in himself yet. Still, 'twill arrive, 'twill arrive! I like the lady—and yet I wish she were a thousand miles away; I like the man too, but a Jesuit is too many men at once to be sure of; and, Gad! I can scarcely sleep at nights for wondering what he may be plotting. This grand tour of his-”