Then he read the paper handed to him. It also was brief:

"The man bearing this is to be held free of arrest on any charge and to be allowed to pa.s.s in freedom through all and any of our dominions. His name is Georges St. Georges, and he is branded with the _fleur-de-lis_ and the letter G.

_Signe_, LOUIS R."

"What does it mean?" reiterated St. Georges. "Who can have done this?"

"It means," said L'Herault, "that you have some powerful interest with his Majesty. Whomsoever you may be, even though you were one of the king's own sons, you must be deemed fortunate. However great your friends may be, your escape is remarkable."

"Friends! I have none. I----" but the sentence was never finished. The excitement of the last hour had overmastered him at last and he sank in a swoon before them.

When he came to himself the others were gone with the exception of one turnkey, who was kneeling by his side, supporting his head and moistening his lips with brandy. But in the place of those who had departed there was another now, a man at whom St. Georges stared with uncertain eyes as though doubting whether his senses were not still playing him false; a man also on one knee by his side, clad in the handsome uniform of the Mousquetaires Noirs.

"Boussac!" he exclaimed. "Boussac! Is it in truth you?"

"It is I, my friend."

Then, as St. Georges's senses came fully back to him, he seized the other's hand and murmured: "You! It is you have done this! Through you that I am saved."

"You are saved, my friend. That is enough. What matter by whom?"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

"I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER."

Once more St. Georges was on the road, heading straight for Troyes, and by his side once more rode a friend, as he had ridden over four years ago--Boussac!

When he had thoroughly recovered from the swoon into which he had fallen on hearing that he was free, he had again and again overwhelmed the mousquetaire with his grat.i.tude--all of which the latter had refused to accept, and had, indeed, gently repudiated. Also it seemed to St. Georges that he avoided the subject, or at least said as little as possible.

"If," he said, when at last they were seated in an inn off the new Rue Richelieu to which he had led St. Georges, "there is anything to which you owe your freedom more than another, it is to the fact that the king must recognise that you are in truth le Duc de Vannes, the son of his earliest friend. Yet--yet"--he continued in an embarra.s.sed manner--"he would not even allow that that should influence him--when--I pleaded for you."

"But it did--it did, Boussac, it did. He must have pondered on it afterward--perhaps reflected on how unjustly I had been treated by his vile minister, Louvois--you say he died in disgrace?--and that may have--nay, must have, turned his heart. O Boussac! how am I ever to repay you? Without your thought and exertions what should I have been now?" and he shuddered as he spoke.

"Oh! la! la!" said Boussac, "never mind about me. The question is now what do you intend to do in the future?"

"Do!" exclaimed St. Georges. "Do! Why, that which I returned to France to do, fought against France for--obtain my child. Boussac, where is that woman now?"

"Woman!--what woman?"

"Ah! Boussac, do not joke. You know very well to what woman I refer.

That young tigress--in her way almost as vile as the woman Louvigny!--the woman who stole my child."

"Mademoiselle de Roquemaure?"

"Ay, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure! That is the name. Oh Boussac! you have given me more than my life, far more. The power to wrench my child away from her keeping, to stand before her a freed man, the king's pardon in my hand, and tax her with her treachery."

"You will do that?"

"Do it! What am I going to Troyes for--to-night?"

"Ay, true! True! What are you going to Troyes for? Yet I should have thought, if you recover the child, it is enough. Why--say--bitter words?"

"Boussac, you--but, there, you are not a father; you cannot understand all I have suffered in these four years past. Why! man, the galleys, my exile, the death that yawned for me this morning, were easier than the loss of my little one. And, with her dying brother's own confession ringing in my ears still, as it will ring when I stand before her to-morrow, as I hope, you ask me what need I have to reproach her--to utter bitter words?"

The mousquetaire shrugged his shoulders; then he muttered something about the recovery of the child being everything, and that reproaches brought little satisfaction with them; and after that he again asked St. Georges when he meant to set out for Troyes?

"To-night, I tell you--to-night. Yet"--and he paused bewildered--"I--I have no money. Not enough to get me a horse, at least. They have given me back all they took from me after my condemnation, but there were only a few guineas left."

"Where is the horse you rode to Paris on when De Mortemart brought you?"

"Ah!" exclaimed St. Georges, "a good horse--though, alas! at a moment when my life was in danger and a horse alone could save me, I--I stole it. Oh, if I can but get that again!"

"Why not? It is doubtless in the stables behind the _cours criminel_, where the guard stable theirs."

It was there; so that difficulty was soon solved, no objection being offered by the authorities to giving up the property of a prisoner who was so distinguished as to be acquitted by the king's order an hour before his execution; and then, when St. Georges had recovered it, he announced his intention of at once setting forth. He was impatient to be gone now he was so near; he calculated that by midday on the morrow he would have forced from Aurelie de Roquemaure a confession of what she had done with Dorine. She was at Troyes he knew; Boussac, who professed himself well acquainted with her movements, having told him that such was the case.

"She is much at court now," he said; "I often see her. And she must be back at Troyes by now--I mean--that--she has been absent from there of late. But--but she would be back by now--she--told me--she was----"

"What?" asked St. Georges, looking at him and wondering why he seemed so incoherent about the woman's movements; wondering also how he came to know so much about them, especially her recent ones--"what did she tell you when last you saw her?"

"That--she has been paying a visit--to--to--a.s.sist a friend--but----"

"Her friendship seems as strong as her hate--and greed," muttered St.

Georges.

"But that," Boussac continued, still floundering a good deal in his speech, "she would be at the manoir last night--yes, last night."

"So. Then she will doubtless be there to-morrow also; she will require rest after rendering her friend so much a.s.sistance. I shall find her there."

"_We_ shall find her there," Boussac answered. "I am going with you."

"You! Why?" Then he laughed--for the first time for many a day. "Do you think I am in danger now, with Louis's protection in my pocket, or," and his brow darkened a little, "do you fear that she is in danger from me?"

"_Mon ami_," Boussac replied, "I think neither of those things. The king's permission has made you safe--your manhood makes her so. Yet, let me ride with you. Remember"--and again he halted in his speech, as though seeking for a suitable reason for accompanying him--"we rode together when _la pet.i.te_ was about to be lost to you; let us do so now when, I hope most fervently, she is about to be restored to you.

And, my friend, I have obtained leave--we Mousquetaires are always fortunate in getting that. Do not deny me!"

"Deny you!--you! The man who saved me! I am an ingrate even to question you," and he seized the black gauntleted hand of the other and wrung it hard.

After that there was no more to be said or done ere they set out--or only one thing. Boussac had mentioned that he had a friend, a dragoon officer, who was proceeding to La Hogue to join his regiment which was still there under Bellefond's command, and by him St. Georges sent twenty pistoles to be given to Dubois, the man who owned the horse which saved his life. He borrowed the money of Boussac, described the inn where he had seized the animal, and then mounted it for the first time with a feeling of satisfaction. "'Tis a good beast," he said, "and has done me loyal service; also it has well replaced another good one--that on which I rode from Pontarlier to Paris and never saw again. How long ago that seems, Boussac!"

"Ay," replied the other, "but it was winter then and the clouds were lowering over your life and her you loved--now 'tis summer, and all is well with you."

"I pray G.o.d! I have suffered my share."