Meanwhile, having taken measures to recapture the Marquise should she have doubled back into France, Charlot was now organising an expedition to scour the road to Prussia, against the possibility of her having adhered to her original intention of journeying that way.

Thus he was determined to take no risks, and leave her no loophole of escape.
Tardivet would have set himself at the head of the six horsemen of this expedition, but that La Boulaye interfered, and this time to some purpose.

He assured the Captain that he was still far from recovered, and that to spend a day in the saddle might have the gravest of consequences for him.
"If the occasion demanded it," he concluded, "I should myself urge you to chance the matter of your health.

But the occasion does not.

The business is of the simplest, and your men can do as much without you as they could with you." Tardivet permitted himself to be persuaded, and Caron had again good cause to congratulate himself that he had remained behind to influence him.