He was in no haste to reach Gascony, he said, and so he intended to visit a former comrade who dwelt in a village some leagues from my road. In the afternoon, coming to the by-road which led to this place, he left me, with the words:
"My name is Blaise Tripault, and should it happen that you ever enroll a company for the King of Navarre—"
"The first name on my list shall be Blaise Tripault," I replied, smiling, and rode on, alone.
Whenever I heard riders behind me, I looked back. At evening I reached an eminence which gave a good view of the country through which I had passed. Two groups of horsemen were visible. One of these consisted of seven men. The chief figure was a burly one which I could not mistake,—that of Barbemouche.
"Peste!" I muttered, frowning. "So they are following me into Poitou! Am I never to have any rest?"
I took similar precautions that night to those which I had taken the night before. The next day, about noon, emerging out of a valley, I saw my pursuers on the top of the hill at my rear. Plainly, they intended to follow me to the end of the earth. I hoped they would stop in Poitiers and get drunk, but they tarried there no more than I. And so it was, later, at Civray and at Angoulême.
Every day I got one or two glimpses of this persistent pack of hounds. Every night I used like measures to make sudden flight possible. One night the sound for which I kept my ears expectant reached them,—the sound of horses' hoofs on the hard road. I dropped from the open window of the inn at which I was, led out my horse from the shed, and made off, southward. The noise made by their own horses prevented my pursuers from hearing that made by mine. Presently the clatter abruptly ceased, whereupon I knew that they had stopped at the inn which I had left. My relief at this was offset by chagrin at a discovery made by me at the same moment: I had left my bag of golden crowns in the inn chamber. I dared not now go back for them. Well, Nerac could not be far away, now. I had traversed a good part of Guienne. The Dordogne was behind me.
I was glad that I had taken better care of the letter from Marguerite to her husband than I had taken of my crowns. Fortunately it had not left my doublet. I felt that my future depended on the delivery of that letter. There could be no doubt that Marguerite had recommended me in it with a favor that would obtain for me both protection and employment from the King of Navarre.
Daylight came, and with it hunger. I stopped at an inn, and was about to dismount, when I remembered that I had no money.
I could do without food for a time, but my horse could not. I told the landlord,—a short, heavy, square-faced, small-eyed man,—that I would, later, send him payment for a breakfast. He looked at me with a contempt that even a peasant dare show to a gentleman, when the gentleman has no money.