"Yes, mon cher Guesno," said Lesurques, "I have quitted for ever our good old town of Douai; or, if not for ever, at least until I have completed in Paris the education of my children. I am now thirty-three years of age. I have paid my debt to my country by serving in the regiment of Auvergne, with some distinction. On leaving the ranks I was fortunate enough to make my services of some slight use, by fulfilling, gratuitously, the functions of chef de bureau of the district. At present, thanks to my patrimony and the dowery of my wife, I have an income of fifteen thousand francs (L.600) a-year, am without ambition, have three children, and my only care is to educate them well. The few days that I have been at Paris have not been wasted; I have a pretty apartment, Rue Montmartre, where I expect to be furnished, and ready to receive you in my turn, with as much comfort as heartiness."
"Wisely conceived," interrupted one of the guests, who, till this moment, had maintained a profound silence; "but who can count upon the morrow in such times as these? May your projects of peace and retirement, Monsieur, be realized: if so, you will then be the happiest man in the Republic; for during the last five or six years, there has been no citoyen, high or low, who could predict what the next week would decide for him."
The speaker uttered this with a tone of bitterness and discouragement which contrasted strangely with the flaunting splendour of his toilet, and the appetite with which he had done honour to the breakfast. He was young, and would have been remarkably handsome, had not his dark eyes and shaggy brows given an expression of fierceness and dissimulation to his countenance, which he vainly endeavoured to hide, by never looking his interlocutor in the face. His name was Couriol. His presence at this breakfast was purely accidental. He had come to see M. Richard, (the proprietor of the house where M. Guesno alighted on his journey to Paris, and who was also one of the guests,) just as they were about to sit down to table, and was invited to join them without ceremony.
The breakfast passed off gaily, in spite of the sombre Couriol; and after two hours' conviviality, they adjourned to the Palais Royal, where, after taking their café at the Rotonde du Caveau, they separated.
II.—THE FOUR HORSEMEN.
A few days afterwards, on the 8th Floréal, four men mounted on dashing looking horses, which, however, bore the unequivocal signs of being hired for the day, rode gaily out of Paris by the barrier of Charenton; talking and laughing loudly, caracoling with great enjoyment, and apparently with nothing but the idea of passing as joyously as possible a day devoted to pleasure.
An attentive observer, however, who did not confine his examination to their careless exteriors, might have remarked that, beneath their long lévites, (a peculiar cloak then in fashion,) they carried each a sabre, suspended at the waist, the presence of which was betrayed from time to time by a slight clanking, as the horses stumbled or changed their paces. He might have further remarked a sinister pre-occupation and a brooding fierceness in the countenance of one, whose dark eyes peeped out furtively beneath two thick brows. He took but little share in the boisterous gaiety of the other three, and that little was forced; his laugh was hollow and convulsive. It was Couriol.
Between twelve and one, the four horsemen arrived at the pretty village of Mongeron, on the road to Melun. One of them had preceded them at a hand-gallop to order dinner at the Hôtel de la Poste, kept by the Sieur Evrard. After the dinner, to which they did all honour, they called for pipes and tobacco—(cigars were then almost unknown)—and two of them smoked. Having paid their bill, they proceeded to the Cassino, where they took their café.
At three o'clock they remounted their horses, and following the road, shaded by stately elms, which leads from Mongeron to the forest of Lénart, they reached Lieursaint; where they again halted. One of their horses had cast a shoe, and one of the men had broken the little chain which then fastened the spur to the boot. The horseman to whom this accident had happened, stopped at the entrance of the village at Madame Châtelain's, a limonadière, whom he begged to serve him some café, and at the same time to give him a needleful of strong thread to mend the chain of his spur. She did so, but observing the traveller to be rather awkward in his use of the needle, she called her servant, la femme Grossetète, who fixed the chain for him, and helped him to place it on his boot. The other three travellers had, during this time, alighted at the inn kept by the Sieur Champeaux, where they drank some wine; while the landlord himself accompanied the traveller and his unshod horse to the farrier's, the Sieur Motteau. This finished, the four met at Madame Châtelain's, where they played at billiards. At half-past seven, after a parting cup with the Sieur Champeaux, whither they returned to re-saddle their horses, they set off again in the direction of Melun.
The landlord stood at his door watching the travellers till out of sight, and then turning into his house again, he saw on the table a sabre, which one of his guests had forgotten to fasten to his belt; he dispatched one of his stable-boys after them, but they were out of sight. It was not till an hour afterwards, that the traveller who had had his spur-chain mended, returned at full gallop to claim his sabre. He drank a glass of brandy, and having fastened his weapon securely, departed at furious speed in the direction taken by his comrades.