Anatole, you had better order the carriage for Monsieur le Chevalier.
I do not think that he will be able to ride home."
Anatole peered at the pale young gentleman on the ground, then he
turned his little wizened face upon me, and grinned in a singularly
solemn fashion. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache was little loved, it
seemed.
Leaning heavily upon the arm of one of the lacqueys, the Chevalier
moved painfully towards the courtyard, where the carriage was being
prepared for him. At the last moment he turned and beckoned the
Vicomte to his side.
"As God lives, Monsieur de Lavedan," he swore, breathing heavily
in the fury that beset him, "you shall bitterly regret having taken
sides to-day with that Gascon bully. Remember me, both of you, when
you are journeying to Toulouse."
The Vicomte stood beside him, impassive and unmoved by that grim
threat, for all that to him it must have sounded like a
death-sentence.
"Adieu, monsieur - a speedy recovery," was all he answered.
But I stepped up to them. "Do you not think, Vicomte, that it were
better to detain him?" I asked.
"Pshaw!" he ejaculated. "Let him go."
The Chevalier's eyes met mine in a look of terror. Perhaps already
that young man repented him of his menace, and he realized the folly
of threatening one in whose power he still chanced to be.
"Bethink you, monsieur," I cried. "Yours is a noble and useful life.
Mine is not without value, either. Shall we suffer these lives - aye,
and the happiness of your wife and daughter - to be destroyed by this
vermin?"
"Let him go, monsieur; let him go.
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