"No; nor ever will in this world."
He turned, bent down, and kissed the fringe of the coverlet. Then he arose, shaken by the strongest emotion life had brought to him.
"I thank you," he said, and moved to the door. He paused outside.
"Are you sure the beast is dead—the man who did that—that?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry—sorry." He shook his long arms in the air. "I should like now to kill him again—again!" He walked swiftly away, and, not waiting for the servant, left the house and found his way back to his forest shelter.
All night long he sat without a fire, indifferent to poor Toto's efforts to get a little notice, not feeling the cold, a sorely wounded man, with a scar on his memory which no after happiness could ever erase.
The next night he found the majordomo, and learned that the countess was dead. He took away blankets and the provisions bountifully supplied, and once more rejoined his dog.
In this manner the last days of February were passed; and in March the spring began to appear, but with it a new peril. The woodmen went here and there at work, and thrice he narrowly escaped being seen. Early in April his friend the majordomo disappeared, and the great château was infested with men who came and went—for what he knew not.
He began to be troubled with a feverish desire to see the streets of Paris. At last he made up his mind to leave his forest shelter; and sometime in April, having hesitated long, he set out. He hid all day in woods, and walked at night, until he reached the Seine. With this as a guide, he went on, robbing hen-houses of eggs, and milking cows, until he was close to Paris. How to enter it he did not know. The times were doubly dangerous. Spies and suspicion were everywhere to be dreaded. His papers had no certifications from the places he was presumed to have visited. Formidable in the background he saw the man Grégoire, the commissioner with the wart of ill luck.