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Updated: May 14, 2025
The road ascended straight before us, I say, and on that road, making for the chateau gate, was a horse, and on the horse a woman. She leaned forward, urging the horse on. Over her shoulders was a mantle, a small cap was on her head. Her hair streamed out behind her as she rode. My heart gave a great bound. "Look, Frojac! It is she!" "We cannot catch her. She is too near the chateau."
And he rushed up to us, accompanied by the halberdiers, while the arquebusier ran to light his match at a torch in the guard-house. Never was anything so expeditiously done. The leader knew nothing of fine sword work. I had my point through his lungs before the halberdiers came up. While I was pulling it out, one of the halberdiers aimed a blow at me, and the other threatened Frojac.
When his glance reached Frojac, my good man had his arquebus on a line with the governor's head, the match dangerously near the breech. "I have looked after the guards, monsieur," said Frojac, cheerily, "both of them." "Stand where you are," said I to him, "and if that gentleman attempts to strike that bowl, see that he does not live to strike it more than once."
Well for us that he had not thought of this before the arrival of Frojac! He was already near the table on which was the tray, when I turned and saw him. He raised his stick to strike the tray. I rushed after him. He brought down his stick. The tray sounded, loud and bell-like. He heard me coming, and raised his stick again. The second clang would be the death-knell of my beloved!
"Bring Frojac to me." Blaise rode back along the irregular line formed by my rude soldiers, picked out an intelligent looking young arquebusier, and led him forward to me. I made this man, Frojac, our guide.
Frojac ran to get the horses. "They would not let you see her!" cried Blaise, stubbornly standing in my way. "You would go straight to death for nothing! My captain, you shall not!" And, as I started towards the stables to mount, he lay hands on me to hold me back, and Maugert, too, caught me by one of the arms. "Out of my way, rebels!" I cried, vehemently, struggling to free myself from them.
After some hours, when night was already beginning to fall in the woods, Frojac pointed ahead to a knoll covered with huge trees between whose trunks the space was choked with lesser vegetation. "There it is," he said. "The Chateau de Maury." We made our way through the thicket, and came suddenly upon ruined walls, rising in the midst of trees.
Thus I was La Chatre's prisoner, and he was mine. Each could only hope, by thought or talk, to arrive at some means of getting the better of the other. La Chatre's back was towards the door by which I had entered. By mere chance, it seemed, I turned my head towards that door. At that instant, my man, Frojac, appeared in the doorway. He had approached with the silence of a ghost.
We may then come up to her." "Can you not see?" said Frojac. "The bridge is already down." So it was. The troops had, doubtless, departed by this gate; the bridge, let down for their departure, was still down, doubtless for their return. The guards left at the chateau were, certainly, on the alert for this return.
Was I believing the story? Was I, with my closer knowledge of her, with my experience of the freaks of circumstance, with my perception of her heart, to accept the first apparent deduction from the few facts at hand, as blind, unthinking, undiscriminating soldiers, Blaise and Frojac, had done? Did I not know of what kind of woman she was? She was no Mlle. d'Arency.
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