Still without any definite plan, he blundered headlong, nevertheless, into the necessary first step towards the fulfilment of his purpose.
“Captain,” said he, looking mighty grave, “I have cause to believe that all is not as it should be in the hills in the district of Montelimar.”
“Is there trouble, monsieur?” inquired the captain, startled.
“Maybe there is, maybe there is not,” returned the Seneschal mysteriously. “You shall have your full orders in the morning. Meanwhile, make ready to repair to the neighbourhood of Montelimar to-morrow with a couple of hundred men.”
“A couple of hundred, monsieur!” exclaimed d’Aubran. “But that will be to empty Grenoble of soldiers.”
“What of it? We are not likely to require them here. Let your orders for preparation go round tonight, so that your knaves may be ready to set out betimes to-morrow. If you will be so good as to wait upon me early you shall have your instructions.”
Mystified, Monsieur d’Aubran departed on his errand, and my Lord Seneschal went down to supper well pleased with the cunning device by which he was to leave Grenoble without a garrison. It was an astute way of escape from the awkward situation into which his attachment to the interests of the dowager of Condillac was likely to place him.
But when the morning came he was less pleased with the idea, chiefly because he had been unable to invent any details that should lend it the necessary colour, and d’Aubran—worse luck—was an intelligent officer who might evince a pardonable but embarrassing curiosity. A leader of soldiers has a right to know something at least of the enterprise upon which he leads them. By morning, too, Tressan found that the intervening space of the night, since he had seen Madame de Condillac, had cooled his ardour very considerably.
He had reached the incipient stages of regret of his rash promise.
When Captain d’Aubran was announced to him, he bade them ask him to come again in an hour’s time. From mere regrets he was passing now, through dismay, into utter repentance of his promise. He sat in his study, at his littered writing-table, his head in his hands, a confusion of thoughts, a wild, frenzied striving after invention in his brain.