"Wait a moment, pray, Monseigneur!" said Arnauld. "Have you no wish to be equally well informed as to Vicomte d'Exmès? For although it is a good thing to know the whereabouts of our friends, it is even more advantageous to be posted as to those of our enemies."
"Oh, a truce to your proverbs!" said Montmorency. "Where is this D'Exmès?"
"Also a prisoner, Monseigneur," replied Arnauld. "Who is there who hasn't been a prisoner more or less in these times? It has been quite the fashion. Well, Vicomte d'Exmès has followed the fashion, and he is a prisoner."
"But he surely will be at no loss to let his whereabouts be known," was the rejoinder of the constable. "He must have friends and plenty of money; no doubt he will procure the wherewithal to pay his ransom, and will be down upon us very soon."
"You are quite right in your conjectures, Monseigneur. Yes, Vicomte d'Exmès has money; and he is very impatient to be at liberty, and proposes to pay his ransom at the earliest possible moment. In fact, he has already sent a messenger to Paris to procure the price of his freedom and hasten back to him with it."
"What can we do, then?" asked Montmorency.
"Fortunately for us, though unfortunately for him," Arnauld continued, "the person whom he has sent to Paris in such hot haste is myself, Monseigneur,—no other than myself, who am in Vicomte d'Exmès's service as squire, under my real name of Martin-Guerre. You see that you can call me a squire without falsehood."
"And have you not executed your commission, you blackguard?" said the constable. "Have you not your pretended master's ransom already in your pocket?"
"Indeed I have, Monseigneur, you may be quite sure, for one doesn't leave such things on the ground. Consider, too, that not to take the money would be to arouse suspicion. I took it to the last crown,—for the good of the undertaking. But don't be alarmed! I shall put off taking it to him for a long while, on one pretext or another. These ten thousand crowns are just what I need to help me to pass the rest of my life piously and honestly; and I should be supposed to owe them to your generosity, Monseigneur, on the strength of the paper you are going to sign."
"I will not sign it, you villain!" cried Montmorency. "I will not knowingly become the accomplice of a thief."