“Charlot, mon Charlot!” she cried, and added a moment later: “It was he—this brave gentleman—who rescued me.”
“Monsieur,” said Charlot, “I shall remember it to my dying day.”
He would have said more, but the peasants, stirred by fear, now roused themselves and plucked at his coat.
“Get you gone, Charlot, Get you gone quickly,” they advised him. “And if you are wise you will leave Bellecour without delay. It is not safe for you here.”
“It is not safe for any of us,” exclaimed one. “I have no mind to be caught when the Seigneur returns. There will be a vengeance. Ah Dieu! what a vengeance!”
The warning acted magically. There were hurried leave-takings, and then, like a parcel of scuttling rabbits, they made for their burrows to hide from the huntsman that would not be long in coming. And ere the last of them was out of sight there arose a stamping of hoofs and a chorus of angry voices. Down tine street thundered the Marquis's cavalcade, brought back by the servant who had escaped and who had ridden after them. Some anger there was—particularly in the heart of the Lord of Bellecour—but greater than their anger was their excitement at the prospect of a man-hunt, with which the chase on which they had been originally bent made but a poor comparison.
“There he is, Monseigneur” cried Jean, as he pointed to La Boulaye. “And yonder are the girl and her husband.”
“Ah! The secretary again, eh?” laughed the nobleman, grimly, as he came nearer. “Ma foi, life must have grown wearisome to him. Secure the woman, Jean.”
Caron stood before him, pale in his impotent rage, which was directed as much against the peasants who had fled as against the nobles who approached. Had these clods but stood there, and defended themselves and their manhood with sticks and stones and such weapons as came to their hands, they might have taken pride in being trampled beneath the hoofs of the Seigneurie. Thus, at least, might they have proved themselves men. But to fly thus—some fifty of them from the approach of less than a score—was to confess unworthiness of a better fate than that of which their seigneurs rendered themselves the instruments.
Himself he could do no more than the single shot in his pistol would allow. That much, however, he would do, and like him whose resources are reduced, and yet who desires to spend the little that he has to best advantage, he levelled the weapon boldly at the advancing Marquis, and pulled the trigger. But Bellecour was an old campaigner, and by an old campaigner's trick he saved himself at the last moment. At sight of that levelled barrel he pulled his horse suddenly on to its haunches, and received the charge in the animal's belly. With a shriek of pain the horse sought to recover its feet, then tumbled forward hurling the Marquis from the saddle. La Boulaye had an inspiration to fling himself upon the old roue and seek with his hands to kill him before they made an end of himself. But ere he could move to execute his design a horseman was almost on top of him. He received a stunning blow on the head. The daylight faded in his eyes, he felt a sensation of sinking, and a reverberating darkness engulfed him.