Taking the wide road that led to the north, I followed it, and passing by a common on which some lads were playing cricket, I came to an inn, much larger than the one I had stopped at in the morning, surrounded by a court-yard with sheds and stables. A number of large carts and vans were resting here, and crawling over the tail-board of one that had a great canvas top, I took off my clothes and began my tailoring.
When it was finished I was in less danger of coming to pieces, and despite what I had eaten, my stomach told me it was past the midday-meal hour.
Now where I was to go I did not have the least idea, and my heart went down like a lead.
But, en avant! There was no sense in tarrying. As I went to go out of the court-yard to take up my aimless walking, a tall chaise in which were two finely dressed gentlemen drove in at the entrance. I had to jump from under the horse's feet. Some of the inn servants, who had paid no attention to me, ran out from the stables at the sound of the wheels, and in the doorway of the house appeared a slender man, with powdered hair, who greeted the other two with a graceful salutation. There was a trace of courtliness in it that was handsome, but my heart gave a bound as I turned to watch them curiously. They were speaking French. Not the French that I had heard lately in the prison, but the French that my mother had taught me and that my uncle spoke.
"Welcome, Monsieur de Brissac!" exclaimed the tall man in the doorway, "and welcome, Monsieur le Marquis."
"De Brissac!—Monsieur le Marquis!" How natural this name and the title seemed to me; and then it all came back—"Gabriel Montclair de Brissac, Marquis de Neuville, friend of my grandfather, le Marquis de Brienne." I remembered that my uncle had made me learn this in the long list of stupid names. There were two sons, Georges Lucien and Guy Léon de Brissac. The latter and his father had both lost their heads on the guillotine on the same day that my grandfather had lost his. Somehow the idea that there might be some help come to me from a man who bore the name of de Brissac crossed my brain, and I turned back into the court-yard.
The servants had led away the horse, and seated at a window were the three fine-looking gentlemen. I watched them for a few minutes, not knowing what to do. I could not hear the sound of their voices, although the window was open, so I came nearer. The shortest of the three, who had been addressed as "Monsieur le Marquis," was talking, and gesticulating with his jewelled hand.
"Yes, yes. We will see the lilies again, my friends," he said in French. "Give this usurper time enough and the rope, and he will hang himself—a trite but true saying, my friends."
All at once one of them looked out of the window and saw me standing close to. I felt as if I had to do something to account for my presence, and an idea suggested to me by my meeting a singing beggar-woman on the streets in the morning was put into immediate practice; why, except for the connection of thought, I should have chosen the song I did I know not, but it was a fortunate circumstance. I struck out into a little chansonnette, something in the nature of a serenade, that I had heard my uncle trill in his high-pitched voice—a song that may have been a favorite with the gallants of King Louis's court.
I did not look in at the window as I sang, but cast my eyes upward in apparent oblivion to my surroundings. As I began the third stanza (something about roses and hearts, I remember) I was interrupted by approaching foot-steps.