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At this, the only post-house in the place, La Boulaye made inquiries as to whether any carriage had arrived from Soignies that morning, to receive a negative answer. This nowise surprised him, for he hardly thought that Mademoiselle could have had time to come so far. She must, however, be drawing nearer, and he determined to ride on to meet her.
It was a vast sum, the tenth of which had never been his at any one time of his wretched life. For five hundred francs he would have journeyed into Hades, and La Boulaye found him willing enough to go to Prussia, and had no need to resort to the more forcible measures he had come prepared to employ.
The man grunted in his sleep, and stirred slightly, to relapse almost at once into his helpless attitude, and to resume his regular breathing, which the blow had interrupted. La Boulaye smiled his satisfaction, and without further hesitancy passed out into the yard.
"Mademoiselle," said he, "Monsieur La Boulaye here was very reticent touching the manner in which my release has been gained. But I never doubted that I owed it to your good efforts, and that you had adopted the course suggested to you by my letter, and bought me from the Republic."
La Boulaye entered and stirred the man with his foot. The fellow sat up blinking stupidly and dragging odd wisps of straw from his grey hair. "What's amiss?" he grunted. As briefly as might be La Boulaye informed him that he was to receive a matter of five hundred francs if he would journey into Prussia with the ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour. Five hundred francs?
To have stood by whilst her father had struck Caron, and moreover, to have done so without any sense of horror, or even of regret, was a matter in which she asked herself whether she had done well. Certainly La Boulaye had presumed unpardonably in speaking to her as he had spoken, and for his presumption it was fitting that he should be punished.
Come, Suzanne," he said, turning abruptly to his daughter, "Enough of this delightful morning have we already wasted on this canaille." With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure. The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face saving the fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut and very sick at heart.
There were some shouts of "Vive la Republique!" some of "Vive le Captaine Charlot!" and so they poured out of the yard, and left him to give a few hurried directions to the ten men that remained. "Sad invalids these, as I live!" exclaimed La Boulaye over his shoulder to his followers. "Ha! There is my friend of the red redingote!"
He came at length to speak of the last capture they had made. "I have taken prizes, Caron," said he, "which a king might not despise. But to-day " He raised his eyes to the ceiling and wagged his head. "Well?" quoth La Boulaye. "What about to-day?" "I have made a capture worth more than all the others put together.
"Now to prepare an explanation for it." He drew a chair under the old brass lamp, that hung from the ceiling. He mounted the chair, and with both hands he seized the chain immediately above the lamp. Drawing himself up, he swung there for just a second; then the hook gave way, and amid a shower of plaster La Boulaye half-tumbled to the ground.
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