"Well, Louise," whispered the Norman, turning to the _soubrette_, "you see I did not come here for no purpose. It is this treaty with Spain I want to find out; and if I do, our fortune is made for ever, and you will eat off gold, and drink out of gold, and be as happy as a princess!"
The prospects which her husband held out, and which might certainly be called golden, were not without their effect on Louise; but still his evident familiarity with the gentleman in the rusty steel coat did not at all suit her ideas of propriety, nor were the matters which they discussed in the least to her taste; but as remonstrance was in vain, and she began to perceive that the influence of her tears was not very great, she resigned herself to her fate in silence.
Several more questions and replies passed between the Norman and his ancient comrade, which, as they tend to throw no light upon this history, shall not find a place therein. At length Monsieur Callot, in as hospitable and courtly a strain as he could assume, requested the pleasure of Monsieur Marteville's company to spend the evening in the vaults of the old chateau, if he had not grown too fine, by living among the great, to associate with his old friends. In return for this, the worthy Norman assured him, that he never was so happy as when he was in their society, accepted the invitation with pleasure, and begged to introduce his wife. Callot would fain have offered his salute to the lips of the fair lady, and had mounted on a huge stone beside her horse for that purpose; but Louise repulsed him with the dignity of a duchess, and Callot did not press the matter farther, merely giving a shrewd wink of the eye and screw of the under-jaw, as much as to say, "she's nice, it seems," and then led the way towards the present abode of Marteville's old band.
The road which he took, wound through the very depth of the wood towards that side of the hill which, looking over the wide extent of forest-ground lying between the old castle and the high road to Troyes, seemed to offer nothing but dark inaccessible precipices, from the shallow stream that ran bubbling at its base to the walls of the ruin above. Crossing the rivulet, however, which did not rise higher than the horses' knees, the robber led the way round a projecting mass of rock, that seemed to have been forcibly riven from the rest, and which, though it left space enough for the horses to turn, would have effectually concealed them from the sight of any one who might be in the wood.