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Updated: June 18, 2025
On the landing above he found Rabecque awaiting him. "Is all well?" he asked, and received from his lackey a reassuring answer. Mademoiselle welcomed him gladly. His long absence, it appeared, had been giving her concern. He told her on what errand he had been, and alarm overspread her face upon hearing its result.
It was noon of the next day when two horsemen gained the heights above La Rochette and paused to breathe their nags and take a survey of the little township in the plain at their feet. One of these was Monsieur de Garnache, the other was his man Rabecque.
There followed a silence, disturbed only by the sound of Rabecque's laboured breathing; then came a stir outside the door of the inn; some one shouted an order. There was a movement of hoofs, a creak and crunch of wheels, and presently the rumble of a heavy carriage being driven rapidly away. But too well did Rabecque surmise what had taken place.
The cobbles rattled under its hooves, the timbers of the drawbridge sent up a booming sound, they were across out of Condillac and speeding at a gallop down the white road that led to the river; after them pounded Rabecque, bumping horribly in his saddle, and attempting wildly, and with awful objurgations, to find his stirrups.
But it was no longer the travestied Garnache that Condillac had known as "Battista" during the past days, it was that gentleman as he had been when first he presented himself at the chateau. Rabecque had shaved him, and by means of certain unguents had cleansed his skin and hair of the dyes with which he had earlier overlaid them.
That done, he called the host, and set himself at table, Rabecque at his elbow in attendance to hand him the dishes and pour his wine. Across the low-ceilinged room the four travellers still sat in talk, and as Garnache seated himself, one of them shouted for the host and asked in an impatient tone to know if his supper was soon to come.
It required little shrewdness to guess in them the personal followers of the Marquis, the remainder of the little troop that had followed the young seigneur to the wars when, some three years ago, he had set out from Condillac. Garnache gave orders for the horses to be cared for, and bade Rabecque get himself fed in the common room.
For the rest he had taken the precaution of leaving Rabecque at the Sucking Calf, and he had given the sergeant strict injunctions that he was not to allow any of his men to leave their posts during his absence, and that the troopers were to hold themselves entirely at the orders of Rabecque.
He had come single-handed save for his man Rabecque; and in a manner that was worthy of being made the subject of an epic, he had carried her out of Condillac, away from the terrible Dowager and her cut-throats. The thought of them sent a shiver through her. "Do you feel the cold?" he asked concernedly; and that the wind might cut her less, he slackened speed.
Marius acknowledged the servile protestation by a sneer, and Rabecque, stirring at last, went forward boldly towards the doorway and its ugly, human barrier. "By your leave, sirs," said he and he made to thrust one of them aside. "You cannot pass this way, sir," he was answered, respectfully but firmly. Rabecque stood still, clenching and unclenching his hands and quivering with anger.
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