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I have transcribed into my collection the letters of M. de Tressan, with my answers to them: and the original of the former will be found amongst my other papers. I am perfectly aware that if ever these memoirs become public, I here perpetuate the remembrance of a fact which I would wish to efface every trace; but I transmit many others as much against my inclination.
"I am to gather, then," said he, dissembling what was passing through his mind, "that you delivered the lady by force or strategy." "By both, monsieur," was the short answer. Tressan continued to comb his beard, and pondered the situation. If things were so, indeed, they could not have fallen out more to his taste. He had had no hand in it, one way or the other.
Rabecque gripped him by the shoulder, and steadied him with a hand that hurt. "What do you say?" he gasped, his face white to the lips. Tressan halted, too, and turned upon Gaubert, a look of incredulity in his fat countenance. "Who has been killed?" he asked. "Not Monsieur de Garnache?" "Helas! yes," groaned the other. "It was a snare, a guet-apens to which they led us.
I am much at fault if you come not both to echo my regret that we did not dispose of Monsieur de Garnache and his lackey when we had them in our power." Her eye fell with sinister promise upon Tressan, who shivered slightly and spread his hands to the blaze, as though his shiver had been of cold. But Marius did not so readily grow afraid.
The man cried out, staggered, and then went down utterly disabled. One swift downward thrust Garnache made at the mass that wriggled under his cloak. The activity of its wriggles increased in the next few seconds, then ceased altogether. Tressan felt wet from head to foot with a sweat provoked by horror of what he saw.
There was a step, and a throat-clearing cough behind him. "Monsieur de Tressan," said a woman's voice, a rich, melodious voice, if haughty and arrogant of intonation. On the instant he turned, advanced a step, and bowed. "Your humblest servant, madame," said he, his hand upon his heart. "This is an honour which " "Which necessity thrusts upon you," she broke in imperiously. "Dismiss that fellow."
His pardon was granted, and M. de Tressan, when he communicated to me the information in the name of the monarch, added that the whole of what had passed should be inserted in the register of the academy. I replied that this was less granting a pardon than perpetuating a punishment.
The soldiers grinned; the Abbot looked on with an impassive face. "The Marquise de Condillac is likely to be homeless henceforth," said the Parisian, addressing the Seneschal. "Will you not be gallant enough to offer her a home, Monsieur de Tressan?" "Will I?" gasped Tressan, scarce daring to believe his own ears, his eyes staring with a look that was almost one of vacancy.
The promise was accompanied, as well on the part of the king as on that of M. de Tressan, with assurance of esteem and respect, with which I was extremely flattered; and I felt on this occasion that the esteem of men who are themselves worthy of it, produced in the mind a sentiment infinitely more noble and pleasing than that of vanity.
When he reached the surface, he must see to it that he broke it gently, for at the window above were sure to be watchers, looking to see how he had fared. Madame, he remembered, had sent Tressan for muskets. If he had returned with them and they should perceive him from above, a bullet would be sent to dispose of him, and it were a pity to be shot now after having come through so much.
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