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I begin to feel uneasy about the hours they have so often spent together alone; and I make up my mind that this very day I will not play the spy upon them, but speak frankly to Yves, and make a clean breast of it. Suddenly from below, clac! clac! two dry hands are clapped together; it is Madame Prune's warning to the Great Spirit.
Yves leans towards me and whispers: "Look over there, brother, in that corner by the last panel; have you noticed the one who is sitting down?" Not I. In my annoyance I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background. The fact is this one pleased me much better.
Yves, the Frenchman, remained at his post forward, holding on to the foremast and indifferent to the spray that was drenching him as he stared through the fog, keenly. My attention was becoming relaxed for, after all, I was but a passenger. Despite Sammy's close shave I maintained a well-grounded faith in him.
Notwithstanding the increased distance, I continue my daily visits to Diou-djen-dji. When night has fallen, and the four couples who compose our society have joined us, as well as Yves and the amazingly tall friend, we descend again into the town, stumbling by lantern light down the steep stairways and slopes of the old suburb.
But Yves it would be decidedly wrong on his part, and would greatly diminish my faith in him. We hear the rain falling on our old roof; the cicalas are mute; odors of wet earth reach us from the gardens and the mountain.
Yves too advances and touches the dainty little paw; after all, if I wed her, it is chiefly his fault; I should never have remarked her without his observation that she was pretty. Who can tell how this strange arrangement will turn out? Is it a woman or a doll? Well, time will show.
Night is closing, in an apartment which has been mine since yesterday. Yves and I, on the first floor, move restlessly over the white mats, striding to and fro in the great bare room, of which the thin, dry flooring cracks beneath our footsteps; we are both rather irritated by prolonged expectation. Yves, whose impatience shows itself more freely, from time to time looks out of the window.
The worthy Helvetians, since they no longer fought far their own liberty, knew the value of their blood too well to allow a single drop of it to be spilled for less than its weight in gold: the result was that, as they had, betrayed Yves d'Alegre, they resolved to betray Ludovico Sforza too; and while the recruits brought in by the bailiff of Dijon were standing firmly by the French flag, careless of the order of the Diet, Ludovico's auxiliaries declared that in fighting against their Swiss brethren they would be acting in disobedience to the Diet, and would risk capital punishment in the end a danger that nothing would induce them to incur unless they immediately received the arrears of their pay.
Yves then approached the captain, who had returned to take his post in the stern, and said, in a low and humble voice, "What course are we to follow, captain?" "We take what course monseigneur pleases," replied the officer. Aramis passed the night leaning upon the bastingage.
Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. She was a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves de Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste.
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