There is not a peasant in all this countryside indeed, scarce a man of any sort but is a red-hot Orleanist, anti-Cardinalist, and friend of the Devil.

Bethink you, monseigneur, to push on at the present is to court murder." "Why, then, we will court murder," said I coldly.

"Give the word to saddle." I asked him at the moment of setting out did he know the road to Lavedan, to which the lying poltroon made answer that he did.

In his youth he may have known it, and the countryside may have undergone since then such changes as bewildered him.

Or it may be that fear dulled his wits, and lured him into taking what may have seemed the safer rather than the likelier road.