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The musketeers, who knew the Chevalier's courage, exchanged glances of surprise and disbelief. As for the accused, he stepped back, horrified. "Monseigneur, one or the other of us is mad! I pray God that it be myself; for it can not be possible that the first minister in France would accuse of such a crime a gentleman who not only possesses courage but pride."
"That means," said D'Harmental, "that you may go and tell Madame de Maine that I hope this evening to fulfill my promise to her. And now go away, my dear abbe, and do not come back for two hours, for I expect some one whom it would be better you should not meet." The abbe, who was prudence itself, did not wait to be told twice, but pressed the chevalier's hand and left him.
He found, too, that all he had heard regarding the youth and beauty of the chevalier's second wife was quite correct, and although she devoted herself a great deal to the Brazilian coffee planter and the Irish-Italian "Martinelli," she had a way of looking over at her middle-aged spouse, without his knowledge, that left no doubt in Cleek's mind regarding the real state of her feelings towards the man.
The Chevalier's thoughts were some time wavering between his inclination to laugh, and a desire of hanging Master Termes; but the long habit of suffering himself to be robbed by his domestics, together with the vigilance of the criminal, whom his master could not reproach with having slept in his service, inclined him to clemency; and yielding to the importunities of the country gentleman, in order to confound his faithful servant, he sat down to table, to make the thirty-seventh of the company.
Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great confidence warned me against making the Chevalier's acquaintance, and said to me, in his blunt way, 'De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing; he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by which anything can be made.
I shuddered, for it was Marguerite beaming on me with her black brilliant eyes. I asked the servant whose picture it was, and where it came from. He said it was the Chevalier's niece, the Marquise de T , and had always been where it was now, only I had not noticed it; it had been freshly dusted the day before. The Chevalier said the same.
The object of the Chevalier's journey was, of course, a secret from the prisoners, who merely felt its effects by having their meals served to them in their own tower; and when he returned after about a month's absence though him looking harassed, aged, and so much out of humour that he could scarcely preserve his usual politeness. In effect he was greatly chagrined.
There was a mystic tone of encouragement, also, in the Chevalier's words, though he feared they only referred to the wishes of Fergus in favour of an union between him and his sister. But the whole circumstances of time, place, and incident combined at once to awaken his imagination and to call upon him for a manly and decisive tone of conduct, leaving to fate to dispose of the issue.
The chevalier's gallantries confirmed this scientific assertion, the responsibility for which does not rest, fortunately, on the historian. In spite of these symptoms, Monsieur de Valois' constitution was vigorous, consequently long-lived. If his liver "heated," to use an old-fashioned word, his heart was not less inflammable.
'I am very glad you are of that mind but then, what would you do in the North? 'In the first place, there are some seaports on the eastern coast of Scotland still in the hands of the Chevalier's friends; should I gain any of them, I can easily embark for the Continent. 'Good your second reason?
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