bord, and
then came Doltaire's voice:

"Stop! Now fetch some brandy."

The prisoners were loosened, and Doltaire spoke sharply to a soldier who
was roughly pulling one man's shirt over the excoriated back. Brandy
was given by Gabord, and the prisoners stood, a most pitiful sight, the
weakest livid.

"Now tell your story," said Doltaire to this last.

The man, with broken voice and breath catching, said that they had
erred. They had been hired to kidnap Madame Cournal, not Mademoiselle
Duvarney.

Doltaire's eyes flashed. "I see, I see," he said aside to me. "The
wretch speaks truth."

"Who was your master?" he asked of the sturdiest of the villains; and
he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them. To the question what
was to be done with Madame Cournal, another answered that she was to be
waylaid as she was coming from the Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to
a nunnery to be imprisoned for life.

Doltaire sat for a moment, looking at the men in silence. "You are not
to hang," he said at last; "but ten days hence, when you have had one
hundred lashes more, you shall go free. Fifty for you," he continued to
the weakest who had first told the story.

"Not fifty nor one!" was the shrill reply, and, being unbound, the
prisoner snatched something from a bench near; there was a flash
of steel, and he came huddling in a heap on the floor, muttering a
malediction on the world.

"There was some bravery in that," said Doltaire, looking at the dead
man. "If he has friends, hand over the body to them. This matter must
not be spoken of--at your peril," he added sternly. "Give them food and
brandy."

Then he accompanied me to my cell, and opened the door. I passed in, and
he was about going without a word, when on a sudden his old nonchalance
came back, and he said:

"I promised you a matter of interest. You have had it. Gather philosophy
from this: you may with impunity buy anything from a knave and fool
except his nuptial bed. He throws the money in your face some day."

So saying he plunged in thought again, and left me.

XVI. BE SAINT OR IMP

Immediately I opened the packet. As Doltaire had said, the two books of
poems I had lent Alixe were there, and between the pages of one lay a
letter addressed to me. It was, indeed, a daring thing to make Doltaire
her messenger. But she trusted to his habits of courtesy; he had no
small meannesses--he was no spy or thief.

DEAR ROBERT (the letter ran): I kn