Chavigni gazed at the paper in amazement, and then at the face of Monsieur Callot, who, totally unconscious of the contents, remained very nonchalantly expecting the reward. "Ten thousand crowns!" cried the Statesman, giving way to his passion. "Ho! without there! take this fellow out and flog him with your hunting whips out of Narbonne. Away with him, and curry him well!"
The grooms instantly seized upon poor Callot, and executed Chavigni's commands with high glee. The robber, however, though somewhat surprised, bore his flagellation very patiently; for under the jerkin which he wore, still lay the rusty iron corslet we have before described, which saved him from appreciating the blows at their full value.
The matter, however, was yet to be remembered, as we shall see; for when Callot, on his return to the forest, informed his captain what sort of reward he had received for the packet, the Norman's gigantic limbs seemed to swell to a still greater size with passion, and drawing his sword he put the blade to his lips, swearing, that before twelve months were over, it should drink Chavigni's blood: and promises of such sort he usually kept most punctually.
Wherein De Blenau finds out that he has made a mistake, and what follows.
Having now conducted our truly-begotten friend, the Sieur Marteville, considerably in advance of the rest of the characters in this true history, it becomes us to show our impartiality by detailing the principal actions of our other personages, and also to display the causes which brought the noble Count de Chavigni to such a distance as Narbonne, a little town in the southern nook of Languedoc, not above a few leagues from Perpignan. However, as all these circumstances are naturally explained in the history of the Count de Blenau, we may as well follow him on the useless pursuit into which he had been led by the precipitancy of Monsieur Henry de La Mothe, his page, who would have saved his master a great deal of trouble and distress, as we all know, if he had thought fit to see the Marquise de Beaumont; but young hounds will often cry upon a wrong scent, and mislead those who should know better.
Thus it happened in the present instance; and De Blenau, blinded by anxiety for Pauline, took the suspicions of his Page for granted, without examination. He knew that Chavigni scrupled not at any measures which might serve a political purpose; he knew that the Norman was in the immediate employment of the Statesman, and was still less delicate in his notions than his master; and he doubted not that Pauline, having been discovered issuing from the Bastille, had been carried off without ceremony, and sent from Paris under the custody of the ci-devant robber. At all events, De Blenau, as he rode along, composed a very plausible chain of reasoning upon the subject; and far from supposing that the Norman would avoid the wood in the neighbourhood of Mesnil, he concluded, from his knowledge of Marteville's former habits, that a forest filled with robbers would fulfil all his anticipations of Paradise, and be too strong an attraction to be resisted.