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They had wanted a spy "who would have all to lose by failure." Such were Montignac's words at the inn at Fleurier. A spy, too, who might gain a wary man's confidence, and with whom a rebel captain might desire or consent to a meeting away from his men. Hardly had their need been uttered when there came mademoiselle to beg a pardon for her father.
Therefore, I intend to stop at the first inn on the way. I hope it is a good one, for I am very hungry." "There is an inn at this end of Fleurier," said Blaise, "but I would not stop if I were you." But I was not to be moved from my intention. When a man has finished a set task, it is time to eat and drink. Therefore, we stopped at the little inn at the northern edge of Fleurier.
Spurn me, and he dies in the chateau of Fleurier, and you shall still belong to me! Why not give me what I have the power and the intention to take?" "If you take it," cried mademoiselle, "that is your act. Were I to give, that would be mine. It is by our own acts that we stand or fall in our own eyes and God's!"
One of them had been at Fleurier, in 1860, on the day of the opening of this line, and she added an interest to the various tunnels, by telling us that a Swiss gentleman of her acquaintance, who had taken a place in one of the open carriages of the first train, found, on reaching the daylight after one of the tunnels, that his neighbour had been killed by a small stone which had fallen on to his head.
He wanted me to become the woman's escort to Clochonne, keep my eyes on her, know when she had settled your business, and, when she was about to start for Fleurier, keep her as his guest in a house that I was to hire in Clochonne. But why do I grow chilly telling you all this, when you do not intend to believe me? Shall we not begin, monsieur?"
How it fitted so many facts! At the inn at Fleurier we had overheard the plan suggested by Montignac for my capture, the employment of a spy who was to find my hiding place, send word of it, then plan an ambush for me. Then the lady had come to the inn. Perhaps she was one who had already some kind of relations with the governor and had now come purposely to meet him.
His secretary, Montignac, took it into his head that he would like to become sole possessor of mademoiselle's time and attractions. But he could not undo the governor's plans, nor could he hope for the woman's cooperation, as she seems to have taken a dislike to him. It had been agreed that, when she had turned you over to the governor's soldiers, she should go to Fleurier to receive her reward.
My persistent, though deferential, inquiries elicited from her, in a wavering voice, that she had not previously possessed the governor's acquaintance; that her entreaties had evoked only the governor's wrathful orders to depart from the province on pain of sharing her father's fate; and that La Chatre had refused to allow her even to see her father in his dungeon in the Chateau of Fleurier.
"To make an example of him, that hereafter no Catholic will dare shelter a Huguenot on the score of old friendship. Let him remain a prisoner in the chateau of Fleurier until the judges, whom I will instruct, shall find him guilty of treason. Then his body shall hang at the chateau gate for the nourishment of the crows."
Only M. de la Chatre, they told me, could order his release. La Chatre had left Fleurier to go northward. I started after him, not waiting even to refresh my horses. When we reached the inn at the end of the town, I had become sufficiently calm to listen to Hugo's advice that it would be best to bait the horses before going further.
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