"Myself," the Mayor answered.
"Ah!" she cried, "if you----"
But I thought that now I might safely step in. "No, no," I said. "M. le Maire is taking all against me. I can assure you, Madame, I shall be glad to be of service to you. And our roads lie together. If, therefore----"
"I shall be grateful," Madame answered with a delightful little courtesy. "That is, if M. le Maire will let out his poor prisoners. Who, as he now knows, have done nothing worse than sympathise with National Guards."
"I will take it on myself, Madame," M. Flandre said, with vast importance. He had been brought to the desired point. "The case is quite clear. But----" he paused and coughed slightly, "to avoid complications, you had better leave early. When you are gone, I shall know what explanations to give. And if you would not object to spending the night here," he continued, looking round him, with a touch of sheepishness, "I think that----"
"We shall mind it less than before," Madame said, with a look and a sigh. "I feel safe since you have been to see us." And she held out a hand that was still white and plump.
The Mayor kissed it.
* * * * *
As I walked, a few minutes later, across the square, picking my steps by the yellow light of M. Flandre's lantern, and at times enveloped in the flying skirt of his cloak--for the good man had his own visions and for a hundred yards together forgot his company--I could have thought all that had passed a dream; so unreal seemed the squalid prison-lodging I had just left, so marvellous the ladies' presence in it, so incredible Mademoiselle's blushing avowal made to my face. But a wheezing clock overhead struck the hour before midnight, and I counted the strokes; a watchman, not far from me, cried, after the old fashion, that it was eleven o'clock and a fine night; and I stumbled over a stone. No, I was not dreaming.
But if I had to stumble then, to persuade myself that I was awake, how was it with me next morning, when, with the first glimmer of light, I walked beside the carriage from the inn to the prison, and saw, before I reached the gloomy door, Madame and Mademoiselle standing shivering under the wall beside it? How was it with me when I held Mademoiselle's hand in mine, as I helped her in, and then followed her in and sat opposite to her--sat opposite to her with the knowledge that I was so to sit for days, that I was to be her fellow-traveller, that we were to go to Nîmes together?