The Red Cockade

"No, M. le Vicomte. But it is believed that wishing to return to Nîmes, and learning that the roads were watched, he disguised himself and joined himself to them. Doubtless they are dévotes."

"Poor things!" I said, with a shudder of compassion; every one seemed to be so good-tempered, and yet so hard. "What will you do with them?"

"I shall send for orders," he answered. "In his case," he continued airily, "I should not need them. But here is your supper. Pardon me, M. le Vicomte, if I do not attend on you myself. As Mayor I have to take care that I do not compromise-but you understand?"

I said civilly that I did; and supper being laid, as was then the custom in the smaller inns, in my bedroom, I asked him to take a glass of wine with me, and over the meal learned much of the state of the country, and the fermentation that was at work along the southern seaboard, the priests stirring up the people with processions and sermons. He waxed especially eloquent upon the excitement at Nîmes, where the masses were bigoted Romanists, while the Protestants had a following, too, with the hardy peasants of the mountains behind them. "There will be trouble, M. le Vicomte, there will be trouble there," he said with meaning. "Things are going too well for the people la bas. They will stop them if they can."

"And this man?"

"Is one of their missionaries."

I thought of Father Benôit, and sighed. "By the way," the Mayor said abruptly, gazing at me in moony thoughtfulness, "that is curious now!"

"What?" I said.

"You come from Cahors, M. le Vicomte?"

"Well?"

"So do these women; or they say they do. The prisoners."

"From Cahors?"

"Yes. It is odd now," he continued, rubbing his chin, "but when I read your commission I did not think of that."

I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "It does not follow that I am in the plot," I said. "For goodness sake, M. le Maire, do not let us open the case again. You have seen my papers, and-"

"Tut! tut!" he said. "That is not my meaning. But you may know these persons."

"Oh!" I said; and then I sat a moment, staring at him between the candles, my hand raised, a morsel on my fork. A wild extravagant thought had flashed into my mind. Two ladies from Cahors? From Cahors, of all places? "How do they call themselves?" I asked.

"Corvas," he answered.

"Oh! Corvas," I said, falling to eating again, and putting the morsel into my mouth. And I went on with my supper.

"Yes. A merchant's wife, she says she is. But you shall see her."

"I don't remember the name," I answered.

"Still, you may know them," he rejoined, with the dull persistence of a man of few ideas. "It is just possible that we have made a mistake, for we found no papers in the carriage, and only one thing that seemed suspicious."

"What was that?"

"A red cockade."

"A red cockade?"

"Yes," he answered. "The badge of the old Leaguers, you know."

"But," I said, "I have not heard of any party adopting that."

He rubbed his bald head a little doubtfully. "No," he said, "that is true. Still, it is a colour we don't like here. And two ladies travelling alone-alone, Monsieur! Then their driver, a half-witted fellow, who said that they had engaged him at Rodez, though he denied stoutly that he had seen the Capuchin, told two or three tales. However, if you will eat no more, M. le Vicomte, I will take you to see them. You may be able to speak for or against them."

"If you do not think that it is too late?" I said, shrinking somewhat from the interview.

"Prisoners must not be choosers," he answered, with an unpleasant chuckle. And he called from the door for a lantern and his cloak.

"The ladies are not here, then?" I said.

"No," he answered, with a wink. "Safe bind, safe find! But they have nothing to cry about. There are one or two rough fellows in the clink, so Babet, the jailer, has given them room in his house."

At this moment the lantern came, and the Mayor having wrapped his portly person in a cloak, we passed out of the house. The square outside was utterly dark, such lights as had been burning when I arrived had been extinguished, perhaps by the wind, which was rising, and now blew keenly across the open space. The yellow glare of the lantern was necessary, but though it showed us a few feet of the roadway, and enabled us to pick our steps, it redoubled the darkness beyond; I could not see even the line of the roofs, and had no idea in what direction we had gone or how far, when M. Flandre halted abruptly, and, raising the lantern, threw its light on a greasy stone wall, from which, set deep in the stone-work, a low iron-studded door frowned on us. About the middle of the door hung a huge knocker, and above it was a small grille.

"Safe bind, safe find!" the Mayor said again with a fat chuckle; but, instead of raising the knocker, he drew his stick sharply across the bars of the grille.

The summons was understood and quickly answered. A face peered a moment through the grating; then the door opened to us. The Mayor took the lead, and we passed in, out of the night, into a close, warm air reeking of onions and foul tobacco, and a hundred like odours. The jailer silently locked the door behind us, and, taking the Mayor's lantern from him, led the way down a grimy, low-roofed passage barely wide enough for one man. He halted at the first door on the left of the passage, and threw it open.

M. Flandre entered first, and, standing while he removed his hat, for an instant filled the doorway. I had time to hear and note a burst of obscene singing, which came from a room farther down the passage; and the frequent baying of a prison-dog, that, hearing us, flung itself against its chain, somewhere in the same direction. I noted, too, that the walls of the passage in which I stood were dingy and trickling with moisture, and then a voice, speaking in answer to M. Flandre's salutation, caught my ear and held me motionless.

The voice was Madame's-Madame de St. Alais'!

It was fortunate that I had entertained, though but a second, the wild, extravagant thought that had occurred to me at supper; for in a measure it had prepared me. And I had little time for other preparation, for thought, or decision. Luckily the room was thick with vile tobacco smoke, and the steam from linen drying by the fire; and I took advantage of a fit of coughing, partly assumed, to linger an instant on the threshold after M. Flandre had gone in. Then I followed him.

There were four people in the room besides the Mayor, but I had no eyes for the frowsy man and woman who sat playing with a filthy pack of cards at a table in the middle of the floor. I had only eyes for Madame and Mademoiselle, and them I devoured. They sat on two stools on the farther side of the hearth; the girl with her head laid wearily back against the wall, and her eyes half-closed; the mother, erect and watchful, meeting the Mayor's look with a smile of contempt. Neither the prison-house, nor danger, nor the companionship of this squalid hole had had power to reduce her fine spirit; but as her eyes passed from the Mayor and encountered mine, she started to her feet with a gasping cry, and stood staring at me.

It was not wonderful that for a second, peering through the reek, she doubted. But one there was there who did not doubt. Mademoiselle had sprung up in alarm at the sound of her mother's cry, and for the briefest moment we looked at one another. Then she sank back on her stool, and I heard her break into violent crying.

"Hallo!" said the Mayor. "What is this?"

"A mistake, I fear," I said hoarsely, in words I had already composed. "I am thankful, Madame," I continued, bowing to her with distant ceremony, and as much indifference as I could assume, "that I am so fortunate as to be here."

She muttered something and leaned against the wall. She had not yet recovered herself.

"You know the ladies?" the Mayor said, turning to me and speaking roughly; even with a tinge of suspicion in his voice. And he looked from one to the other of us sharply.

"Perfectly," I said.

"They are from Cahors?"

"From that neighbourhood."

"But," he said, "I told you their names, and you said that you did not know them, M. le Vicomte?"

For a moment I held my breath; gazing into Madame's face and reading there anxiety, and something more-a sudden terror. I took the leap-I could do nothing else. "You told me Corvas-that the lady's name was Corvas," I muttered.

"Yes," he said.

"But Madame's name is Corréas."