“Is it possible!” repeated the good man, elevating his hands and eyes in especial wonder.
Jaqueline then told her tale, and in conclusion, said, “And now, my good father, I place myself under your protection, and hope you will take me away from this place, and all the strange people about it. I’ll go anywhere with you; but had rather go to the Cock and Bottle, because there I shall be sure to find a patache to take me to Moulins.”
“My dear child,” said the priest fervently, “I will go with thee; I will protect thee; but while I am preparing for our departure, thou must leave this room, where thou art liable to intrusions, and I will place thee in the charge of good Madame Rigaud.”
Jaqueline was accordingly removed to a more private apartment, where she awaited the priest’s summons in great uneasiness, as Madame Rigaud, who was not particularly taciturn, visited her from time to time with strange accounts of what had passed, and was then going on among the household, all in consequence of her untoward presence therein.
It seemed that the Comte had wounded his friend the Captain, and that, while he was so laudably engaged, a footman, anxious to gaze upon the charms of the bewitching fair one, had peeped through the opening of the half-closed door of the salon, and witnessed the scene between her and the amorous notary, the particulars of which he whispered to his master on his triumphant return. The Comte thereupon rushed furiously forward, and, discovering the luckless limb of the law still upon his knees, and apparently paralysed by Jaqueline’s abrupt retreat, without any ceremony bestowed upon him sundry hard names and one particularly ugly kick, by the latter of which the little gentleman was so thrown off his guard as to abandon the chance of a lucrative legal process, and to demand satisfaction instanter. It was given, and the Comte was wounded; and then the notary, feeling that his suit was in no degree advanced by this display of his prowess, and yet smarting under the mortification consequent upon our heroine’s style of receiving his addresses, most unadvisedly spake of her after the fashion of the fox in the fable, when he found that the grapes were above his reach. This produced certain sarcastic observations from another of the party, which led to a fresh encounter, that terminated by the legal functionary’s being disarmed with a violent sprain in his right wrist.
Then, in the lower department, much altercation had taken place. Monsieur Robert thought proper to call Philippe Rigaud a young puppy; and Philippe, instead of acknowledging his puppyism, as in duty bound, to his superior, vehemently apostrophised him as an old fool. The female domestics were all scandalised beyond measure at the blindness and stupidity of their sweethearts in particular, and the men-servants generally, in admiring an awkward country-girl, as some called our heroine; but all agreed in pronouncing her to be “no great things.”
At length Jaqueline and Father Dunstan took their departure through a private road from the back of the chateau, and rode in silence, side by side, for nearly a league, when Jaqueline expressed her sorrow for the disasters and quarrels that have just been related.
“It was no fault of thine, my child,” observed the priest; “it is ever thus when women are so exceedingly beautiful. Men don’t know what to do with themselves. Heigho!”
“La, Father Dunstan!” exclaimed Jaqueline, “what can that have to do with the present case? I’m no beauty, that’s certain, or some of our young fellows would have found it out long ago. You used to say yourself that I was more fit for a boy; and latterly I’ve been thinking the same, and had a great mind, since nobody would come a-courting to me, to dress myself up like a man, and try my luck that way.”
“Most exceedingly dull and stupid must the young men about St Denis be in the present generation!” said Father Dunstan. “But you’ll find it very different at Moulins. Heigho!” and they rode on in silence for a considerable distance, and then Jaqueline exclaimed, “Why, this is the same way that I was brought this morning! Yes. And there I declare is part of the old castle, peeping above the trees. We shan’t get to the Cock and Bottle to-night at this rate! But, bless us, mon bon père, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you well?”