As for herself, he assured her that as his wife she would not want, and showed her how idle was her dread of living in France.
"And now, Mademoiselle," he said, more briskly, "let us see to this ostler." He opened the door of the outhouse, and uncovering his lantern he raised it above his head.

Its yellow light revealed to them a sleeper on the straw in a corner.

La Boulaye entered and stirred the man with his foot.
The fellow sat up blinking stupidly and dragging odd wisps of straw from his grey hair.
"What's amiss ?" he grunted.
As briefly as might be La Boulaye informed him that he was to receive a matter of five hundred francs if he would journey into Prussia with the ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour.
Five hundred francs?
It was a vast sum, the tenth of which had never been his at any one time of his wretched life.

For five hundred francs he would have journeyed into Hades, and La Boulaye found him willing enough to go to Prussia, and had no need to resort to the more forcible measures he had come prepared to employ.
Accompanied by the ostler, they now passed to the stables, and when La Boulaye had unlocked the door and cut the bonds that pinioned the Marquis's coachman, they got the horses, and together they harnessed them as quietly as might be.
Then working with infinite precaution, and as little sound as possible, they brought them out into the yard and set them in the shafts of the carriage.

The rest was easy work, and a quarter of an hour later the heavy vehicle rumbled through the porte-cochere and started on its way to Soignies.
La Boulaye dropped the keys into a bucket and went within.