"I must confess," said she, "that I have heard little of him but evil."
"It is natural that the Catholics in Berry should find nothing good to say of him," I replied. "Yet it is true that he is far from perfect,—a subtle rascal, who dons disguises, and masquerades as other than he is, a leader of night-birds, and sometimes a turbulent roysterer."
"I have been told," she said, "that he treacherously killed a man in
Paris, and deserted from the French Guards."
"As for the killing," I replied, "there was no treachery or unfairness on his part; and if he deserted from the King's French Guards, it was when the King had consented to give him up to the Duke of Guise, whom the weak King, then as now, hated as much as feared."
She gave a heavy sigh, and went on, "La Tournoire is a brave man, of course?"
"He is a man," I said, "who expects to meet death as he meets life, cheerfully, not hoping too much, not fearing anything."
"And this hiding-place of his," she said, in a very low voice, again dropping her glance to the ground. "Tell me of it."
I gave her a description of the ruined Château of Maury.
"But," she said, "is not the place easily accessible to the troops of the
Governor?"
"The troops of the garrison at Clochonne have not yet found the way to it," I replied. "The château was abandoned twenty years ago. Its master is an adventurer in the new world, if he is not dead. Its very existence has been forgotten, for the land pertaining to it is of no value. The soldiers from Clochonne could find it only by scouring this almost impenetrable wilderness."