“If he didn’t he wouldn’t have been such an ass as to put out,” said Peltran. “Why should he fling away his bit of life for a stranger that he owed nothing to?”
“For the matter of that, he owed nothing to M. le Marquis; the Caboffs, they say, are rich enough to buy up every inch of land in Gondriac.”
“Folks may owe more than money can pay,” retorted Peltran. “M. le Marquis was very kind to the old man when his sons were killed, and, whatever Caboff’s sins may have been, he had a fine sense of his natural obligations. It didn’t surprise me much when I saw how handsomely he paid off his debt to M. le Marquis.”
“They say that monseigneur swore to Mme. Caboff that if ever she asked him a favor, whatever it was, he would grant it,” said the neighbor.
“Very likely,” remarked the host. “M. le Marquis has a grand-seigneur way of doing everything. I hope the Caboffs will have the delicacy never to abuse it.”
Not many days after this conversation Mme. Caboff was to be seen walking across the moor on her way to the castle. She looked an older woman than she was; sorrow had broken her down, and it would take little now to destroy the frail tenure of life that remained to her.
This was the first time she had ever entered the castle. Under other circumstances the visit would have thrown the widow into some trepidation. She would have been pleasantly fluttered at the prospect of an interview with the great lord in his own halls, and would have been much exercised on her way thither as to what she should say to him; but her mind was full of other cares to-day.
M. le Marquis was at home. He had spent the morning over a letter from Captain Hermann de Gondriac, which contained a graphic personal narrative of the retreat from Moscow of that disastrous expedition from which, out of the fifty thousand cavalry who went forth, only one hundred and twenty-five officers returned. A pang of anguish and patriotic indignation wrung the old nobleman’s heart as he read and re-read the terrible story, but tears of deep thankfulness fell from the father’s eyes at the thought that his son was spared and was returning safe and unhurt with that decimated army of starved, exasperated spectres. The marquis was perusing the letter for the tenth time when Mme. Caboff was announced. He rose to receive her with a warmth of welcome that boded well for her petition.
“M. le Marquis, you made me give you a promise once—that night; do you remember it?” she said, holding his white hand lightly between her two black-kidded ones, and looking up into his face with the meek and hungry look of a dog begging for a bone which may be refused and a kick given instead.
“Remember it? Yes,” replied the Marquis, returning the timid pressure with a cordial grasp. “You are in trouble; sit down, madame, and tell me what there is that I can do to make it lighter for you.”