Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
"The rest is easy, though you may be subjected to some slight discomfort between this and Grenoble." She smiled back at him, a pale, timid smile, like a gleam of sunshine from a wintry sky. "That matters nothing," she assured him, and strove to make her voice sound brave. There was need for speed, and compliments were set aside by Garnache, who, at his best, was not felicitous with them.
At the hour at which Monsieur de Garnache was seeking to persuade the Abbot of Saint Francis of Cheylas to adopt a point of view more kindly towards a dead man, Madame de Condillac was at dinner, and with her was Valerie de La Vauvraye. Neither woman ate appreciably.
The Seneschal turned to her again with his unanswered questions touching the end of that butchery above-stairs. She told him what Fortunio had said that Garnache was drowned as a consequence of his mad leap from the window. Into Tressan's mind there sprang the memory of the thing Garnache had promised should befall him in such a case.
"La damigella a la," said he. For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the words, assisted as they were by the man's expressive gesture. He sneered cruelly. "It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not," he answered. "Away with you. I shall call you when I need you." And he pointed to the door. Garnache experienced some dismay, some fear even.
Fortunio had been shrewd in his conclusions, yet a trifle hasty; for whilst, as a matter of fact, he was correct in assuming that the Parisian had not crawled out of the moat neither at the point he had searched, nor elsewhere yet was he utterly wrong to assume him at the bottom of it. Garnache had gone through that window prepared to leap into another and, he hoped, a better world.
Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms, until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of a sudden dart of Garnache's sword. Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of the girl.
But the obstacles which should have hindered his assailants hindered Garnache even more at this juncture. In that instant Fortunio whipped the chair from the table-top, and flung it forward. One of its legs caught Garnache on the sword arm, deadening it for a second. The sword fell from his hand, and Valerie shrieked aloud, thinking the battle at an end.
And as he introduced himself he rose out of respect for Garnache, who had remained standing. Garnache knew him not at all, yet never doubted that his tale was true; the fellow had a very courtly, winning air; moreover, Garnache was beginning to feel lonely in the wilds of Dauphiny, so that it rejoiced him to come into the company of one whom he might regard as something of a fellow-creature.
Behind the stranger pressed his three companions now, whilst the troopers across the room forgot their card-play to watch the altercation that seemed to impend. The foreigner for such, indeed, his French proclaimed him turned half-contemptuously to the host, ignoring Garnache with an air that was studiously offensive. "Jackanapes?" murmured Garnache again, and he, too, turned to the host.
Garnache said nothing. Acknowledge the courtesy he would not; refuse it he could not. So he sat, and waited for her to speak, his eyes upon the fire. Madame had already set herself a course. Keener witted than her son, she had readily understood, upon Garnache's being announced to her, that his visit meant the failure of the imposture by which she had sought to be rid of him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking