Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/219

 Still he looked pale and wan, nor was it till George had forced on him a beaker of steaming punch that his eye recovered its brightness and the blood mantled once more in his clear sallow cheek.

"And you escaped them?" said the Captain, reverting to the fatal night of their affray in the Montmirail gardens. "Escaped them without a scratch! Well, it was ten to one against you, and I cursed the Duke with all my heart as I galloped on towards the coast when I thought of your predicament. Guard-room, court-martial, confession, and a firing party was the best I could wish you; for on the reverse of the card I pictured a lettre de cachet, and imprisonment for life in Vincennes or the Bastile! But how did you get away? and above all, how did you elude the search afterwards?"

Eugène wet his lips with the hot punch, which he seemed to relish less than his more robust comrade, and looked distrustfully about him while he replied—

"I had little difficulty in extricating myself from the gardens, my Captain, for when I had disposed of Bras-de-Fer, there was no real swordsman left. The Musketeers fight well, no doubt; but they are yet far from true perfection in the art, and their practice is more like our fishermen's cudgel-play than scientific fencing. I wounded two of them slightly, made a spring at the wall, and was in the street at the moment you entered the Prince-Marshal's carriage. My difficulty then was, where to conceal myself. I do not know Paris thoroughly, to begin with, and I confess I shuddered at the idea of skulking for weeks in some squalid haunt of vice and misery. I think I had rather have been taken and shot down at once."

"You would not have been safe even in dens like those," interrupted the other. "Our Débonnaire is not so refined in his orgies but that I believe every garret in the Faubourgs is frequented by himself and his roués. Bah! when we drew pay from Louis le Grand at least we served a gentleman. The Jesuits would have been your best chance. Why did you not take refuge with them?"

Eugène shuddered, and the pale face turned paler still, but he did not answer the question.

"When we used to hunt the hare in Normandy," he