“Captain,” said the marquis, throwing him his glove, “you are free; that’s your passport. The Chasseurs du Roi know that they must not kill all the game.”
“So much the better for me!” replied Merle, “but you are making a mistake; we shall come to close quarters before long, and I’ll not let you off. Though your head can never pay for Gerard’s, I want it and I shall have it. Adieu. I could drink with my own assassins, but I cannot stay with those of my friend”; and he disappeared, leaving the guests astonished at his coolness.
“Well, gentlemen, what do you think of the lawyers and surgeons and bailiffs who manage the Republic,” said the Gars, coldly.
“God’s-death! marquis,” replied the Comte de Bauvan; “they have shocking manners; that fellow presumed to be impertinent, it seems to me.”
The captain’s hasty retreat had a motive. The despised, humiliated woman, who was even then, perhaps, being put to death, had so won upon him during the scene of her degradation that he said to himself, as he left the room, “If she is a prostitute, she is not an ordinary one, and I’ll marry her.” He felt so sure of being able to rescue her from the savages that his first thought, when his own life was given to him, was to save hers. Unhappily, when he reached the portico, he found the courtyard deserted. He looked about him, listened to the silence, and could hear nothing but the distant shouts and laughter of the Chouans, who were drinking in the gardens and dividing their booty. He turned the corner to the fatal wing before which his men had been shot, and from there he could distinguish, by the feeble light of a few stray lanterns, the different groups of the Chasseurs du Roi. Neither Pille-Miche, nor Marche-a-Terre, nor the girl were visible; but he felt himself gently pulled by the flap of his uniform, and, turning round, saw Francine on her knees.
“I don’t know; Pierre drove me back and told me not to stir from here.”
“That way,” she replied, pointing to the causeway.
The captain and Francine then noticed in that direction a line of strong shadows thrown by the moonlight on the lake, and among them that of a female figure.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil seemed to be standing, as if resigned, in the midst of other figures, whose gestures denoted a debate.