"Oho, M. de Berquin!" I said to myself, with an inward laugh; "I do not know whether you are bargaining for help to persecute Mlle. de Varion, or to spy on the Sieur de la Tournoire; but it has come to pass that you can do both at the same time."
CHAPTER IX.
THE FOUR RASCALS
We rode southward at an easy pace, that mademoiselle might not be made to suffer from fatigue. Aside from the desirability of our reaching safe territory, there was no reason for great haste. M. de Varion had not yet been tried, and the attempt to deliver him from prison need not be made immediately. Time would be required in which I might form a satisfactory plan of action in this matter. It would be necessary to employ all my men in it, and to bring them secretly from Maury by night marches, but I must not take the first step until the whole design should be complete in my mind.
I suggested to mademoiselle that we first go to her father's house, in Fleurier, where she might get such of her belongings as she wished to take with her. But she desired to take no more along than was already in the portmanteaus that her boys, Hugo and Pierre, carried with them on their horses. She had come directly from Bourges with this baggage, having been visiting an unmarried aunt, in that city, when news of her father's arrest reached her.
When I questioned her as to her conduct on the reception of that news, her face clouded, and she showed embarrassment and a wish to avoid the subject. Nevertheless, she gave me answers, and I finally learned that her purpose on leaving Bourges had been to seek the governor of the province, immediately, and petition for her father's release. It was by accident that she had met M. de la Chatre at the inn, where she had stopped that her horses might be baited. My persistent, though deferential, inquiries elicited from her, in a wavering voice, that she had not previously possessed the governor's acquaintance; that her entreaties had evoked only the governor's wrathful orders to depart from the province on pain of sharing her father's fate; and that La Chatre had refused to allow her even to see her father in his dungeon in the Château of Fleurier.
Her agitation as she disclosed these things to me became so great that I presently desisted from pursuing the subject, and sought to restore brightness to the face of one whose tenderness and youth made her misfortune ineffably touching.
I found that, with a woman's intelligence, she had a child's ingenuousness. I had no difficulty in leading her to talk about herself. Artlessly she communicated to me the salient facts of her life. Her father, the younger son of a noble family, had passed his days in study on his little portion of land near Fleurier. Like myself, she had when very young become motherless. As for her education, her unmarried aunt had taught her those accomplishments which a woman can best impart, while her father had instructed her concerning the ancients, the arts, and the sciences. She had been to Paris but once, and knew nothing of the court.
Most of my conversation with mademoiselle was had while we traversed a deserted stretch of road, where I could, with safety, ride by her side and allow Blaise to take my place with the maid, Jeannotte. I could infer how deeply the good fellow had been smitten with the petite damsel by the means which he took to impress her in return. Far from showing himself as the wounded, sighing lover, he swelled to large dimensions, assumed his most martial frown, and carried himself as a most formidable personage. He boasted sonorously of his achievements in battle.
"And the scar on your forehead," I heard her say, as she inspected his visage with a coquettish side glance; "at what battle did you get that?"