"That is my opinion," rejoined La Renaudie. "Hold yourself in readiness, and be tranquil."
They parted, and Gabriel walked thoughtfully away.
In his thirst for vengeance, was he not allowing his conscience to go astray somewhat? Already it seemed to be driving him on toward civil war; but since events would not come to him, he must go to them.
That same day he returned to his house in the Rue des Jardins St. Paul, where he found his faithful Aloyse alone. Martin-Guerre was no longer there; André had remained with Madame de Castro; Jean and Babette Peuquoy had returned to Calais with the intention of going thence to St. Quentin, whose gates had been opened to the loyal weaver by the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.
Thus the master's return to his lonesome abode was more melancholy even than usual. Ah, but did not the motherly old nurse love him enough for all? We despair of picturing the worthy creature's joy when Gabriel informed her that he had come to stay with her for some time in all probability. He lived in most absolute secrecy and solitude, to be sure; but he was there by her side, and very rarely left the house. Aloyse could feast her eyes on him, and wait upon him. It was a long time since she had been so happy.
Gabriel, smiling sadly upon her, envied her loving heart its happiness. Alas! he could not share it with her. His life henceforth was even to himself a terrible enigma, of which he both dreaded and longed to know the solution.
Thus his days passed in impatience and apprehension, anxious and bored for more than a month.
As he had promised his nurse, he hardly ever left the house; but sometimes in the evening he would go and prowl around the Châtelet, and on his return would shut himself up for hours at a time in the funeral vault, whither the unknown bearers had secretly brought his father's body.
Gabriel seemed to take a gloomy pleasure in going back thus to the day when the outrage had been put upon him, that he might keep up his courage with his wrath.
When he looked upon the forbidding walls of the Châtelet, but above all when he contemplated the marble tomb where the sufferings of that noble life had finally found rest, the terrible morning when he had closed the eyes of his murdered father came back to him in all its horror.