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Updated: May 23, 2025
I sat still, listening. Presently a low sound struck my ear, something between a growl and a groan. I quickly arose, left the shed, and ran to a clump of bushes at the side of the inn, whence the sound proceeded. Separating the bushes I saw, lying prone on the ground among them, the stalwart body of Blaise. "What is the matter?" I cried. "Speak! Are you wounded?"
It was the old talk all over again, the agent urging him once more to take to slave-running, except that in other days Captain Blaise had displayed less patience.
As Halfman made him no answer but continued to stare gloomily into the garden, Blaise concluded that the interest lay there which made him thus distracted. So he came down to the table and looked over Halfman's shoulder. In the distance he saw a man and woman walking among the trees. The man was patently the Puritan prisoner, the woman was the chatelaine of Harby.
Holt found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of French and English very well. The lad so pleased the gentleman by his talk that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon him now.
And very cleanly done, too! A pretty stroke! Well, M. Anne, that was a clever fellow, a very clever fellow. He thought so and I thought so, and what was more to the purpose the most noble Raoul de Bezers thought so too. You understand!" He leered at me and I did understand. I understood that unwittingly I had rid Blaise Bure of a rival.
Marcel was on his knees in the corner praying for the miracle which should be his own handiwork, not the first man nor the last who has called on God to bear the burden his own shoulder refuses. Blaise was of better stuff.
"The only man in the company who knows this country," replied my devoted squire, Blaise Tripault, "is Frojac, but he makes up for the ignorance of the others by knowing it very well. He can lead us to the most deserted spot among these mountains, where there is an abandoned chateau, which is said to be under a curse." "If part of it is under a roof as well, so much the better," I answered.
After a long and toilsome progress through pathless and deeply shaded wilds, we reached, in the afternoon, the forest inn kept by Godeau and his wife. It had been my intention to stop and rest here, and to send Blaise ahead to Maury, that one of the rooms of our ruined chateau might be made fit for mademoiselle's reception.
With Marie Louise there were M. Dubois, the Duchess of Montebello, the Countess of Lucay, Mesdames Durand and Ballant, ladies-in-waiting, ladies of the bedchamber, etc., and Madame Blaise. The Emperor, his mother and sisters, and two physicians, Drs. Corvisart and Bourdier, were in the next room. Napoleon kept going in and out of his wife's chamber, encouraging her with kind and cheery words.
Mathieu was almost on the point of answering her that, even if this child were found again, it could hardly cure her of her grief at having no child of her own. He had divined her agony at seeing Blaise take Maurice's place at the works now that Beauchene had resumed his dissolute life, and daily intrusted the young man with more and more authority.
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