Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
Our first care was to examine the bed; but while we had been talking in the courtyard the servant had brought clean sheets, had made the bed, and was now smoothing the blankets. "Who has been sleeping there?" asked Marcasse, with his usual caution. "Nobody," she replied, "except M. le Chevalier or M. l'Abbe Aubert, in the days when they used to come."
One morning, having managed to make me take a little nourishment, and noticing that with my strength my melancholy and anxiety were returning, Marcasse announced, with a simple, genuine delight, that Edmee was not dead, and that they did not despair of saving her.
The cure and the other witnesses, having pledged their words to this, we set out all together, Edmee on the sergeant's horse, he on an animal belonging to one of his men, myself on the cure's, Patience and the cure afoot between us, the police on either side, and Marcasse in front, still impassive amid the general terror and consternation.
Then a fresh sense of weariness came over me, and he was obliged to let me sit down again for half an hour. At last he lifted me up and succeeded in leading me to Roche-Mauprat, where we arrived very late. I do not know what happened to me during the night. Marcasse told me subsequently that I had been very delirious.
"Do not tell me even that; it would imply that some one in the world might actually believe it. But Edmee said something extraordinary to Patience just as she was dying; for she is dead; it is useless for you to try to deceive me. She is dead, and I shall never see her again." "She is not dead!" cried Marcasse.
Needless to say, the distress inseparable from all great political crises never entered into Marcasse's mind, and not a single drop of blood sullied the romantic picture which Patience had unrolled before his eyes. From these sublime hopes to the role of valet to M. de la Marche was a far cry; but Marcasse could reach his goal by no other way.
The man and dog climbing up ladders and running along beams with marvellous assurance and agility, the dog sniffing every hole in the wall, playing the cat, crouching down and lying in wait until the game comes out for his master's rapier; the man thrusting through bundles of straw and putting the enemy to the sword all this, when arranged and carried out with gravity and dignity by Don Marcasse, was, I assure you, a most singular and interesting performance.
"The axe might help us to find a passage," I said, "if there is one; but why, simply because your dog scratches the wall, persist in believing that John Mauprat, or the man who resembles him, could not have come in and gone out by the door?" "Come in, if you like," replied Marcasse, "but gone out no, on my honour! For, as the servant came down I was on the staircase brushing my boots.
Perhaps, too, I felt somewhat reassured by the presence of his companion, who was a frequenter of Roche-Mauprat, and would be likely to show me respect and afford me assistance. Marcasse, the mole-catcher, as he was called, professed to rid the dwellings and fields of the district of polecats, weasels, rats and other vermin.
With him was his brother Leonard, who had just fired his last pistol shot at random, luckily without hitting any one. Patience's first impulse was to prepare to defend himself. On recognising Marcasse, however, the fugitives, far from showing themselves hostile, asked for shelter and help. As their situation was so desperate no one thought that assistance should be refused.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking