Both at Chatillon and in Bar, which he was now leaving behind, he and Boussac had spoken to those whose duty it was to keep an eye to the safety of the highroads, and had informed the captain of the _marechausse_--or mounted patrol of the highroads--of the attack that had been made on them. But this official had only shrugged his shoulders and remarked that "it was possible, very possible."

"Louvois," he said, "is responsible for all. Either he denudes the country of men to send on his campaigns, so that none are left to guard it, or, the campaigns being over, he pours back into it thousands of disbanded soldiers who, for want of aught else to do, become _filous_ and _spada.s.sins_. What would you? And according to your own account, monsieur, you and your friend, the mousquetaire, could take good care of yourselves."

"These were neither _filous_ nor _spada.s.sins_," replied St. Georges, "or at least the leader was not. Oh! that I may meet him again, and when I am not enc.u.mbered with a harmless child to protect!"

"You know him, then, monsieur?"

"No. And since he carefully disguised his face as well as protected his head, I may not even a.s.sert that I have ever seen him. But I suspect."

"Tell me the name of him you suspect, and I may do something--may call upon him to answer your charge."

"Nay," replied St. Georges, "that cannot be. For I must not tarry here; I have the king's orders to ride straight for my destination, halting no more than is necessary; and so, perforce, I must go on. But should you hear of a man wearing an ancient burganet whose appearance in your neighbourhood seems suspicious, and who"--remembering the description given by the man they had gagged and left tied to the tree at Aignay-le-Duc--"is young, with a brown beard cropped close and gray eyes, I pray you question him as to his doings two nights ago. It may save your roads from further brigandage, and--should you confine him for any length of time--his life from my sword. For, I promise you, if ever I encounter him again, and am sure of my man, he shall not escape a second time."

"_Mon Dieu!_" replied the captain of the _marechausse_, "if he falls into our hands I will warrant him against your sword. If we can but bring his attack on you at Aignay-le-Duc home to him, it will be the wheel and not the sword with which he will find his account."

"So best. Yet I doubt your catching him, and must believe and hope the punishment he deserves shall reach him through my hand. If it is he whom I think, he is of high position."

"Many of high position have come to the wheel when in our grip," said the fierce old captain, a man who had followed his trade under Conde.

"_Ma foi!_ we have great powers, we of the _marechausse_, and for brigandage on the king's highway we use those powers swiftly. Poof! If we catch him and bring his vagabondage home to him, he will be broken all to pieces before his position is of any avail."

So in this frame of mind St. Georges left the old man, and now, as night drew on, he neared Troyes.

All day he had pondered on the meeting that was before him--on the fact that he was about to encounter the woman who had once loved so dearly the man he believed to be his father. For, that he would meet her, stand face to face with her, he supposed was certain. She would scarce let an officer of the _chevaux-legers_ stay in her house--sent there by the king's orders--and not summon him to her presence.

Moreover, did he not go there, as that evil-seeming bishop had said, so that he might also hear a word possessing great significance to both the king and his minister? A word of similar import to the one the bishop had himself sent!

"Yet," he pondered, as now the hum from the busy old city reached his ears and he saw its smoke rising in the evening air, "yet, does she know who I am, whom I believe myself to be? Ha!" as a thought struck him, "how else should it be? If De Roquemaure, her son, or stepson, knows, then she must know too. And--and does she, too, wish me dead--and you--you, also, my darling," with a pressure of his arm against his burden, "as well? _Mon Dieu!_ If that is so, then it is to the lion's jaws I am going in entering this manoir of hers. No matter!

I will do it. It is in the king's name I present myself; let us see who dares a.s.sault his messenger. And," he muttered fiercely to himself, "if her whelp, De Roquemaure, is the man with the brown beard--the man whose voice I shall know in a thousand, although it reached me before through iron bars--he shall have one more chance at my life in spite of his lady mother." And he clinched his white teeth as he reflected thus.

Knowing what he did, namely, that "the whelp, De Roquemaure," as he had termed him, was heir in a year or two to De Vannes's great fortune, and coupling with that fact that he and his child had been attacked in a neighbourhood at no great distance from Troyes, he had begun on his solitary ride this day to speculate as to whether the whole of his journey, his sudden summons from Pontarlier to Paris, was not some deeply devised plot to remove him out of existence. For, although he had long suspected who and what he was, might it not be the case that those in whose light he stood had only recently learned that such was the case? And, if such were the fact, what a revelation, what a blow, such knowledge would be to them! They had doubtless long looked forward to the enjoyment of the Duc de Vannes's wealth; if they had now discovered that the possession of that wealth might be disputed, what more likely than that they should endeavour to remove for ever from their path the two--himself and his child--who could so dispute it with them?

"Yet," he had mused all through that day, "how know it since I, of all people, have no certain knowledge; how, above all, learn that their opportunity had come? How know that I who stand between them and their greed should pa.s.s upon their way, come across their path? Bah!" he finally exclaimed, "it is a coincidence that I should so travel their road, seek shelter in the house that my father's heir dwells in. It may be that when I see this young De Roquemaure he shall in no way resemble that night a.s.sa.s.sin who attacked me; it may be that his mother no more dreams that she is about to see the son of the man she loved than that she will ever see him again in life."

Yet, even as he so decided, he knew that there was more than coincidence in it. He knew that those who had attacked him and Boussac at Aignay-le-Duc were more than common bravos. Otherwise the child's life would not have been sought as fiercely as his own; the spy, whomsoever he might be, would not have ridden so many leagues from Dijon to carry the news of his approach.

Therefore, in spite of his attempted dismissal of all his doubts and suspicions, he resolved that, above all, he would be cautious as regarded one thing--his child. She, at least, was under no orders to seek shelter in the manoir; the roof that covered this marquise and her stepson should never be slept under by Dorine.

"All women's hearts," he murmured, "go out to my motherless babe, strangers though they be. There must be many such in this old city, and one such I will find. If as--G.o.d help me!--I must suppose, this she-wolf and her husband's son seek our lives, at least they shall get no chance at hers. The mistress of a common inn, a warder's wife, will keep her in greater safety than she may be under the roof-tree of madame la marquise."

The gates of Troyes were not yet shut--the city having too much traffic with the outlying hamlets to permit of their being closed early--so that St. Georges rode in without any formalities beyond replying to the usual questions as to who he was and what was his business, and, pa.s.sing slowly into the quaint streets, soon came to a great _auberge_ which looked as though suitable for the purpose he required, a shelter for the child. In the vast kitchen, or hall, through whose diamond-paned windows he could see perfectly, he perceived a young bare-armed woman cooking at a large fireplace, while around her at wooden tables sat the usual company of such places--men drinking in groups or eating from platters which another woman brought from the first and set before them. So he rode in under the great gateway and called loudly for an hostler to come.

At his summons a man came forth who, seeing his soldier-like appearance, asked if he desired to rest there for the night, and stated at the same time that the inn was very full.

"That may be so," replied St. Georges, "yet, perhaps, not so full but that a child can be sheltered here for one night. See, friend," he continued, opening his cloak, "I bear one here who has been carried far by me. Think you the hostess will give her protection? She needs a good bed sorely."

As it always was--to the credit of humanity--the sight of the little helpless thing sleeping on its father's arm roused this man's sympathy as it had roused that of all others.

"_Ma foi!_" he said, stooping to gaze at it as it lay on that arm, "a rude cradle for _la pet.i.te_. Yet--there is no hostess; the landlord's wife is dead. And why--why--do you leave it? Why not stay yourself?"

"I have to present myself to the Marquise de Roquemaure at her manoir.

Where is that manoir? Heaven grant I have not pa.s.sed it on the road!"

"Half a league outside the city--to the north, on the Paris road. If you have come from the south, you have not pa.s.sed it."

"So! It is from the south I come. Now, quick, can I leave the child here--in safety?"

"I will see. Wait." And he went away toward the kitchen, leaving St.

Georges standing by his horse easing its saddle, and then holding a bucket of water, which he had picked up, to its thirsty mouth with his disengaged hand.

Presently the man came back, followed by one of the young women whom St. Georges had seen waiting on the company--a dark girl with her arms bare--a girl whose face looked kind and honest. And again with her, as with the others, her heart went out to the little child in the great man's arms. The sense of helplessness, of dependence on so unusual a nurse, touched all those hearts, especially feminine ones.

Briefly as might be he explained to her what it was he required--a night's shelter for and watchfulness over the child, he having to visit the Manoir de Roquemaure. Also, he said, he would come back early in the morning to fetch it away.

"If," said the girl, a little hesitatingly, for she was but a waitress at the inn, "monsieur will intrust the child to me--it is a pretty thing, and see--see--how tired it is!--how it yawns!--then I will do my best. It may sleep with me, and I am used to children. I have several little sisters whom I saw to after my mother's death and before I took service."

"I will intrust it to you most thankfully," St. Georges replied. "Your face is honest, my girl, and true."

So--telling her, as he had told others on his road, that the child was motherless--he kissed it, and bade it good-night, saying inwardly, as he ever said when he parted from it, a little prayer that G.o.d would guard and have it in his keeping, and so let the waitress take it away. But, because something told him he was in a dangerous neighbourhood, he impressed upon her that she should in no way leave it more than was absolutely necessary; above all, he begged her and the hostler, who was a witness to the proceedings, to remember that they need say nothing about a child having been left in her care. And they, with many protestations that they would not chatter, a.s.sured him that he need be under no apprehension.

"I take my rest," the girl said, "at the close of day. The child shall not leave me till I rise at dawn, nor, indeed, until monsieur returns.

I promise."

Then he let her go away with it, and busied himself next with his horse, seeing that it was rubbed down and freshened with a feed.

"For," said he, patting its flank, "you have another league to do, my friend, ere your rest comes." And the animal being refreshed, he gave the hostler a piece of silver as earnest of more in the morning if he found he had not been chattering, and so made for the North Gate.

"And now," he said to himself as he pa.s.sed out, "for the house of the woman De Vannes loved, the house of the man who, I believe, thirsts for my life and the life of my child."

CHAPTER IX.

A ROYAL SUMMONS.

"La plus cruelle de toutes les voies par laquelle le roi fut instruit bien des annees fut celle de l'ouverture des lettres. Il est incroyable combien des gens de toutes les sortes en fureut plus ou moins perdus."

_St. Simon._

A fortnight before St. Georges had set out upon his long and, as it had already proved, hazardous ride from Pontarlier to Paris, four men were busily employed in a small, neatly furnished _cabinet_ at Versailles--a little apartment that partook more of the appearance of a bureau, or office, than aught else.

Two were seated at a table facing each other; behind each of these was one of the others, who handed them papers rapidly drawn from portfolios which they carried. Of the men who were seated, the one with his hat on and wearing a costume of brown velvet--because already the days were very cold--was Louis the Fourteenth; the other, whose manner was extremely rough and coa.r.s.e--indeed brutal, except when addressing the king himself--was Louvois, the Minister of War, ostensibly, but in reality the one minister who had his fingers in all the business of the state. Those standing behind each of the others were Pajot and Rouillier, who farmed the postal service from the crown.

"_Finissons_," said Louis, in the low clear voice that expressed, according to all reports, more authority than even the trumpet tones of many of his great commanders--"_finissons_. The morning wears away.

What remains to be done?" Then in a rich murmur he said: "It has not been too interesting to-day. My subjects are losing the art of letter-writing."

On the table there lay five large portfolios bound in purple leather and impressed with a crown and the letters L. R. Also upon each was stamped a description of its contents. On one was inscribed, in French of course, "Letters opened at the Post"; another "Conduct of Princes and Lords"; a third bore upon it "Private Life of Bishops and Prelates"; a fourth, "Private Life of Ecclesiastics"; and the fifth, "Report of the Lieutenant of the Police."

Furnished thus with these five reports, which reached his august hands and were inspected weekly by his august eyes, Louis considered that the whole of his subjects' existences were, if not known to him, at least very likely at some period or other to come under his supervision. What he did not know, however, was that Louvois, who was the originator of the odious system of opening letters sent through the post, did not always show to him those epistles which came first into his own hands. Therefore in this case, as in many others before and after the days of Louis _le Dieudonne_, the valet was a greater man than his master.