Indeed there was much to explain—but not now. “I only knew at the eleventh hour,” said the priest quickly. “And under the seal, Gaston; so I could not tell you. My promise to you prevented my telling her before I had time to consider whether I were justified in breaking it. That time was never given me; but had I not had to leave in such haste I should have told her. But—listen, Gaston, for God’s sake—all may yet come right of itself, for I pressed her so strongly to come to Brittany in person to see the ‘Marquis de Kersaint,’ giving her full directions, that I fully believe she will come. And if the sword lies between you and that meeting she would urge you——”
“To take it up,” said the leader of Finistère. “Yes, yes. You are right. I don’t see things clearly this morning.” He drew a long breath, jerked back the little curtain from before the casement, and the risen sun entered gloriously. Then he turned round, his figure dark against it, and said, in his voice of everyday,
The Abbé went quickly up to him and kissed him.
Not Artamène de la Vergne himself had received the command to boot and saddle, which set the Clos-aux-Grives in such a pleasurable commotion at sunrise that morning, more jubilantly than Lucien du Boisfossé. None of the three had been more thrilled than he with the joyful news about the English frigate and its cargo, and the prospect of a brush with the Blues before that cargo could be secured.
But alas for those bright anticipations! The youthful philosopher was destined to have no hand in disembarking barrels of powder on the beach of Sainte-Brigitte. Because M. de Kersaint considered him the youngest officer with a head on his shoulders—how gladly would poor Lucien have foregone that flattering opinion!—he had been left behind with thirty men or so to guard the deserted headquarters. And there, late the next afternoon, he still was, trying to read Rabelais in the empty ‘nursery,’ in spite of a headache. For on top of his head, bandaged up like a mummy’s, there was a fairly extensive sabre cut—though there had been no fighting at the Clos-aux-Grives. But Lucien had seen some rather murderous fighting, for all that.
It was M. de Brencourt who was the _fons et origo_ of that headache—M. de Brencourt who had so mysteriously disappeared, who could not be found for any searching before the column started on its march to the sea . . . but who had just as mysteriously reappeared, about four hours after its departure, to fall into such a paroxysm of rage and despair when he learnt what had happened as Lucien hoped never to witness again. It was plain that the Comte feared Lucien and everyone else would attribute his strange defection (of which he offered no explanation) to cowardice, an idea which had never entered the youth’s head, and which he endeavoured tactfully to convey to his superior would enter the head of no living man who knew him. In the end the Comte did what du Boisfossé had seen from the first he would do—rode off like a madman along the road to the sea.