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A waiting-woman shrieked that she should fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the instinct of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the town about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that they might slacken speed.
Madame's heart grew sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged him by the fast-failing light a horse's length before his men with only Tignonville beside him. She held her breath would the shock never come? If Badelon had not seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And then, even as she moved, they met!
And silent, grim, more formidable even than old Badelon, the veteran fighter, who knew all the tricks and shifts of the melee, he spurred to the flank of the line. "Now, steady!" Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were beginning to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming! Stand! Stand!" The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick of time.
In five minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot and old Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before sunset! Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and what was that? He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a groan from him.
We stay an hour!" It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles, while the men laid out such food it was little as had been brought, and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and when it had passed Badelon was inexorable.
He has done well!" "Carlat?" "Ay, there they are! And you are mistress in your own land! At last you are mistress, and you have me to thank for it! See!" And heedless in his exultation whether Badelon understood or not, he pointed to a place before them where the road wound between two low hills.
"With what force?" The magistrate shrugged his shoulders, and looked doubtfully at Badelon, who was keeping the door. Tavannes followed the glance with his usual impatience. "Mon Dieu, you need not look at him!" he cried. "He has sacked St. Peter's and singed the Pope's beard with a holy candle! He has been served on the knee by Cardinals; and is Turk or Jew, or monk or Huguenot as I please.
"You?" "Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly. "I may halt on this leg for aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude Boiteux who was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage under the Chatelet." "Bah, man, you will get a new lord!" Badelon nodded. "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and thoughtfully. "And I am tired.
But Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced.
And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady has her silk glove again to put in her bosom!" with a grimace and a sudden reddening of his harsh features "if master priest come within reach of my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go." "Ay, ay!" said Badelon. "And if you fail of your stroke I will not fail of mine! I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes! I shall be there!"
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