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Pierre Lawrence had supplied the one ingredient necessary to leaven the talk of these dreamers into action. Even the notary found himself compelled to contribute when Albert de Chantonnay asked him outright for a subscription. And the priests, ably led by the Abbe Touvent, acted after the manner of the sons of Levi since olden times.
There was only one Abbe Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fete, for the chateau or the cottage. There were a dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce or tender, gay or sad, a poet or a soldier a light persifleur, who had passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and shining, or a young man of soul, capable of high ideals.
Above the stables, quite close to the gate, half a dozen rooms were in the occupation of the Marquis de Gemosac; but it was not to these that the Abbe Touvent directed his tremulous steps. Instead, he went toward the square, isolated house, standing in the middle of that which had once been the great court, and was now half garden, half hayfield.
The Abbe Touvent made it his special care to preside over the table where small glasses of eau-de-vie d'Armagnac and other aids to digestion were set out in a careful profusion. "It is a theory, my dear Marquis," admitted Madame de Chantonnay. "But it is nothing more. It has no heart in it, your theory. Now I have a theory of my own."
But he forgot to replace it, and he went away with the cap in his hand. She heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat. The Abbe Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to the Chateau of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the key in the rusty lock of the great gate.
The card tables had lost their attraction; and, although many parties were formed, and the cards were dealt, the players fell to talking across the ungathered tricks, and even the Abbe Touvent was caught tripping in the matter of a point.
"I will not even tell the story as it was told to me," he said to the Marquis de Gemosac, to the Abbe Touvent and to the Comtesse de Chantonnay, whom he met frequently enough at the house of his cousin, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, in that which is now the Province of the Charente Inferieure. "I will not even tell you the story as it was told to me, until one of you has seen the man.
It was almost the time of the vintage, and the country roads were dotted with the shambling figures of those knights of industry who seem to spring from the hedgerows at harvest-time in any country in the world, when the Abbe Touvent sought out Marie in her cottage at the gates of the chateau. "A la cave" answered the lady's voice. "In the cellar do you not know that it is Monday and I wash?"
"The skin, madame?" inquired the Abbe Touvent, with that gentle and cackling humour in which the ordained of any Church may indulge after a good dinner. The Abbe Touvent had, as a matter of fact, been Madame de Chantonnay's most patient listener through the months of suspense that followed Loo Barebone's sudden disappearance.
Thus they talked until the guests began to arrive, and for Madame de Chantonnay the time no doubt seemed short enough. For no one appreciated Albert with such a delicacy of touch as the Abbe Touvent. The Marquis de Gemosac and Juliette were the last to arrive. The Marquis looked worn and considerably aged. He excused himself with a hundred gestures of despair for being late.
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