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Updated: June 14, 2025
He came to a standstill by the table, at which he clutched to save himself from falling, and turned bewildered, furious eyes upon "Battista," by whom he now dimly realized that he had been assailed. Garnache's senses had all left him in that moment when Valerie had cried out. He cast discretion to the winds; reason went out of him, and only blind anger remained to drive him into immediate action.
"There is a bridge up yonder, monsieur," returned the servant, thankful to have the conversation changed. They rode towards it in silence, Garnache's eyes set now upon the grey pile that crowned the hillock, a half-mile away, on the opposite bank of the stream. They crossed the bridge and rode up the gently rising, bare, and rugged ground towards Condillac.
She could not take her eyes from the crimson stain that spread slowly on the floor, coming from under that limply huddled mass of arms and legs. "Do not look, mademoiselle," Garnache implored her softly. "Be brave, child; try to be brave." She sought to brace her flagging courage, and by an effort she averted her eyes from that horrid heap and fixed them upon Garnache's calm, intrepid face.
Garnache's mind, actuated by very different motives, was engaged upon the same task, so much so that not a word heard he of what his supposed compatriot was whispering. Whence came this courier? Why had not that fool Fortunio asked him, so that Garnache might have overheard his answer? Was he from Paris and the Queen, or was he, perchance, from Italy and Florimond?
Betimes, too, the Lord Seneschal rode out of Grenoble, attended by a couple of grooms, and headed for Condillac, in doing which little though he suspected it he was serving nobody's interests more thoroughly than Monsieur de Garnache's. Madame received him courteously. She was in a blithe and happy mood that morning the reaction from her yesterday's distress of mind.
The movement went near to costing him his life. The light no longer falling so pitilessly upon Fortunio's eyes, the captain saw more clearly than hitherto, and shot a swift, deadly stroke straight at the region of Garnache's heart.
They were grouped now at the other end of the long, low chamber, by the door leading to the interior of the inn. A few paces distant the landlord watched them with uneasy eyes. But what dismayed Garnache's servant most of all was to see the man who called himself Gaubert standing in talk with a slender, handsome youth, magnificently arrayed, in whom he recognized Marius de Condillac.
Half a word with me is as good as a whole sentence with another. You have dubbed me in polite phrases an impertinent. That I am not; and I resent the imputation." "Oh, that!" said the Marquis, with a half-laugh and a shrug. "If you resent it " His smile and his gesture made the rest plain. "Exactly, monsieur," was Garnache's answer. "But I do not fight sick men."
"Is this the watch you keep?" quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning the youth's face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache's mind, but his face maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and, with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,
Yet the voice, she knew, was Garnache's and none other. It was a voice not easily mistaken. And now, as she looked and looked, she saw that the man's nose was Garnache's, though oddly stained, and those keen eyes, they were Garnache's too.
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