to a chill dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency, such as I have known follow a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been difficulties to be overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end. Now the end was certain, and very near; so near that it filled all the prospect. One hour of triumph I might still have; I hugged the thought of it as a gambler hugs his last stake. I planned the place and time and mode, and tried to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price? Alas, that would intrude too, and more as the evening waned; so that as I passed this or that thing by the road, which I could recall passing on my journey south, – with thoughts so different, with plans that now seemed so very, very old, – I asked myself grimly if this were really I, if this were Gil de Berault, known as Zaton's premier joueur; or some Don Quichotte from Castile, tilting at windmills, and taking barbers' bowls for gold.
We reached Agen very late in the evening, after groping through a by-way near the river, set with holes and willow-stools and frog-spawns-a place no better than a slough. After it the great fire and the lights at the Blue Maid seemed like a glimpse of a new world, and in a twinkling put something of life and spirits into two at least of us. There was queer talk round the hearth here of doings in Paris, – of a stir against the Cardinal, with the Queen-mother at bottom, and of grounded expectations that something might this time come of it. But the landlord pooh-poohed the idea, and I more than agreed with him. Even M. de Cocheforêt, who was for a moment inclined to build on it, gave up hope when he heard that it came only by way of Montauban; whence, since its reduction the year before, all sorts of canards against the Cardinal were always on the wing.
"They kill him about once a month," our host said, with a grin. "Sometimes it is Monsieur who is to prove a match for him, sometimes César Monsieur-the Duke of Vendôme, you understand, – and sometimes the Queen-mother. But since M. de Chalais and the Marshal made a mess of it, and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to His Eminence-that is his new title, they tell me."
"Things are quiet round here?" I asked.
"Perfectly. Since the Languedoc business came to an end, all goes well," he answered.
Mademoiselle had retired on our arrival, so that her brother and I were for an hour or two thrown together. I left him at liberty to separate himself if he pleased, but he did not use the opportunity. A kind of comradeship, rendered piquant by our peculiar relations, had begun to spring up between us. He seemed to take pleasure in my company, more than once rallied me on my post of jailer, would ask humorously if he might do this or that, and once even inquired what I should do if he broke his parole.
"Or take it this way," he continued flippantly "Suppose I had stuck you in the back this evening, in that cursed swamp by the river, M. de Berault? What then? Pardieu! I am astonished at myself that I did not do it. I could have been in Montauban within twenty-four hours, and found fifty hiding-places, and no one the wiser."
"Except your sister," I said quietly.
He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he said, "I am afraid I must have put her out of the way too, to preserve my self-respect. You are right." And on that he fell into a reverie which held him for a few minutes. Then I found him looking at me with a kind of frank perplexity that invited question.
"What is it?" I said.
"You have fought a great many duels?"
"Yes," I said.
"Did you never strike a foul blow in one of them?"
"Never. Why do you ask?"
"Well, – I wanted to confirm an impression," he said. "To be frank, M. de Berault, I seem to see in you two men."
"Two men?"
"Yes, two men," he answered. "One, the man who captured me; the other, the man who let my friend go free to-day."
"It surprised you that I let him go? That was prudence, M. de Cocheforêt," I replied, "nothing more. I am an old gambler-I know when the stakes are too high for me. The man who caught a lion in his wolf-pit had no great catch."
"No, that is true," he answered, smiling. "And yet-I find two men in your skin."
"I dare say that there are two in most men's skins," I answered, with a sigh, "but not always together. Sometimes one is there, and sometimes the other."
"How does the one like taking up the other's work?" he asked keenly.
I shrugged my shoulders. "That is as may be," I said. "You do not take an estate without the debts."
He did not answer for a moment, and I fancied that his thoughts had reverted to his own case. But on a sudden he looked at me again. "Will you answer me a question, M. de Berault?" he said, with a winning smile.
"Perhaps," I said.
"Then tell me-it is a tale that is, I am sure, worth the telling. What was it that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of me?"
"The Cardinal," I answered.
"I did not ask who," he replied drily. "I asked, what. You had no grudge against me?"
"No."
"No knowledge of me?"
"No."
"Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens, man," he continued bluntly, rising and speaking with greater freedom than he had before used, "nature never intended you for a tip staff! What was it, then?"
I rose too. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low. "I will tell you-tomorrow!" I said. "I shall have something to say to you then, of which that will be part."
He looked at me in great astonishment; with a little suspicion, too. But I put him off, and called for a light, and by going at once to bed, cut short his questions.
Those who know the great south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, will remember a particular place where the road two leagues from the town runs up a long hill. At the top of the hill four ways meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky is a finger-post, indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me on my journey down; perhaps, because I had from it my first view of the Garonne valley, and there felt myself on the verge of the south country where my mission lay. It had taken root in my memory; I had come to look upon its bare, bleak brow, with the finger-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.
Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again. That long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had in my mind. That sign-post, with the roads pointing north, south, east, and west, could there be a better place for meetings and partings?
We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon-M. de Cocheforêt, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of yesterday, and I rode ahead. They came after me at their leisure. At the foot of the hill, however, I stopped and, letting Mademoiselle pass on, detained M. de Cocheforêt by a gesture. "Pardon me, one moment," I said. "I want to ask a favour."
He looked at me somewhat fretfully, with a gleam of wildness in his eyes that betrayed how the iron was eating into his heart. He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his impatience. The bonhomie of last night was quite gone. "Of me?" he said. "What is it?"
"I
