Presently, Blaise, glancing out of the window, exclaimed, "The devil! We
are not yet rid of our friends! There is one of them, at least!"
I looked out and saw two mounted gentlemen, one of whom was Montignac,
the governor's secretary, who had ridden back. The other, with whom he
was talking in low tones, and with an air of authority, was a man of
my own age, dressed in the shabby remains of rich clothes. His face
showed the marks of dissipation, and had a cynical, daredevil look.
Now and then a sarcastic smile broke suddenly over the handsome and
once noble features.
"I have seen that man, somewhere, before," said I to Blaise.
While I stood searching my memory, and the man sat talking to Montignac,
both having stopped their horses in front of the inn, there tramped up,
from the South, four other travellers, all of a kind very commonly seen
on the highways, in those days of frequent war. They were ragged soldiers
of fortune, out at elbows, red of cheek and nose, all having the same
look of brow-beating defiance, ready to turn, in a moment, into abject
servility. The foremost of these was a big burly fellow with a black
beard, and a fierce scowl.
As he came up towards the gentleman with whom Montignac was talking,
there suddenly came on me a sense of having once, in the dim past, been
in strangely similar circumstances to those in which I was now. Once,
long ago, had I not looked out in danger from a place of concealment upon
a meeting of those two men before an inn?
The burly rascal saluted the mounted gentleman, saying, in a coarse,
strident voice:
"At your service, M.
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