"But you fear him?"
"Fear him?" Madame St. Lo answered; and, to the surprise of the Countess,
she made a little face of contempt. "No; why should I fear him? I fear
him no more than the puppy leaping at old Sancho's bridle fears his tall
playfellow! Or than the cloud you see above us fears the wind before
which it flies!" She pointed to a white patch, the size of a man's hand,
which hung above the hill on their left hand and formed the only speck in
the blue summer sky. "Fear him? Not I!" And, laughing gaily, she put
her horse at a narrow rivulet which crossed the grassy track on which
they rode.
"But he is hard?" the Countess murmured in a low voice, as she regained
her companion's side.
"Hard?" Madame St. Lo rejoined with a gesture of pride. "Ay, hard as the
stones in my jewelled ring! Hard as flint, or the nether millstone--to
his enemies! But to women? Bah! Who ever heard that he hurt a woman?"
"Why, then, is he so feared?" the Countess asked, her eyes on the subject
of their discussion--a solitary figure riding some fifty paces in front
of them.
"Because he counts no cost!" her companion answered. "Because he killed
Savillon in the court of the Louvre, though he knew his life the forfeit.
He would have paid the forfeit too, or lost his right hand, if Monsieur,
for his brother the Marshal's sake, had not intervened. But Savillon had
whipped his dog, you see. Then he killed the Chevalier de Millaud, but
'twas in fair fight, in the snow, in their shirts. For that, Millaud's
son lay in wait for him with two, in the passage under the Chatelet; but
Hannibal wounded one, and the others saved themselves. Undoubtedly he is
feared!" she added with the same note of pride in her voice.
The two who talked, rode at the rear of the little company which had left
Paris at daybreak two days before, by the Porte St. Jacques. Moving
steadily south-westward by the lesser roads and bridle-tracks--for Count
Hannibal seemed averse from the great road--they had lain the second
night in a village three leagues from Bonneval. A journey of two days on
fresh horses is apt to change scenery and eye alike; but seldom has an
alteration--in themselves and all about them--as great as that which
blessed this little company, been wrought in so short a time. From the
stifling wynds and evil-smelling lanes of Paris, they had passed to the
green uplands, the breezy woods and babbling streams of the upper
Orleannais; from sights and sounds the most appalling, to the solitude of
the sandy heath, haunt of the great bustard, or the sunshine of the
hillside, vibrating with the songs of larks; from an atmosphere of terror
and gloom to the freedom of God's earth and sky. Numerous enough--they
numbered a score of armed men--to defy the lawless bands which had their
lairs in the huge forest of Orleans, they halted where they pleased: at
mid-day under a grove of chestnut-trees, or among the willows beside a
brook; at night, if they willed it, under God's heaven. Far, not only
from Paris, but from the great road, with its gibbets and pillories--the
great road which at that date ran through a waste, no peasant living
willingly within sight of it--they rode in the morning and in the
evening, resting in the heat of the day. And though they had left Paris
with much talk of haste, they rode more at leisure with every league.