Buton nodded gloomily. "Then if Monsieur has no fault to find," he replied, "perhaps he will let me finish my work. Afterwards I will deliver a message I have for him. But it is for his ear, and the forge----"
"Is not the place for secrets, though the smith is the man!" I answered, with a parting gibe, fired over my shoulders. "Well, come to me on the terrace when you have finished."
He came an hour later, looking hugely clumsy in his fine clothes; and with a sword--heaven save us!--a sword by his side. Presently the murder came out; he was the bearer of a commission appointing me Lieutenant-Colonel in the National Guard of the Province. "It was given at my request," he said, with awkward pride. "There were some, M. le Vicomte, who thought that you had not behaved altogether well in the matter of the riot, but I rattled their heads together. Besides I said, 'No Lieutenant-Colonel, no Captain!' and they cannot do without me. I keep this side quiet."
What a position it was! Ah, what a position it was! And how for a moment the absurdity of it warred in my mind with the humiliation! Six months before I should have torn up the paper in a fury, and flung it in his face, and beaten him out of my presence with my cane. But much had happened since then; even the temptation to break into laughter, into peal upon peal of gloomy merriment, was not now invincible. I overcame it by an effort, partly out of prudence, partly from a better motive--a sense of the man's rough fidelity amid circumstances, and in face of anomalies, the most trying. I thanked him instead, therefore--though I almost choked; and I said I would write to the Committee.
Still he lingered, rubbing one great foot against another; and I waited with mock politeness to hear his business. At length, "There is another thing I wish to say, M. le Vicomte," he growled. "M. le Curé has left Saux."
"Yes?"
"Well, he is a good man; or he was a good man," he continued grudgingly. "But he is running into trouble, and you would do well to let him know that."
"Why?" I said. "Do you know where he is?"
"I can guess," he answered. "And where others are, too; and where there will presently be trouble. These Capuchin monks are not about the country for nothing. When the crows fly home there will be trouble. And I do not want him to be in it."
"I have not the least idea where he is," I said coldly. "Nor what you mean." The smith's tone had changed and grown savage and churlish.