A group of workmen had gathered round him and at seeing this piece of metal which Ralph picked up and waved in the air, they cheered. It was the first discovery that had been made since they began work.
Doubtless Ralph would have kept his head and gone quietly off, pretending that he was going to find the five friends to give them this metal stem; but at that very moment there was a loud shouting at the corner of the building, and Rolleville, followed by the rest of the five, came bucketing round it, bellowing:
“Thief! Arrest him! Thief!”
Ralph dived through the group of workmen and took to his heels. It was absurd, like the rest of his conduct for the last few minutes, for if he had wished to win the confidence of the Baron and his friends he should not have shut them up in a cellar and robbed them of the object of their search. But since he was really fighting for Josephine Balsamo, he had no other idea in his head but that of offering her sooner or later the trophy he had just acquired.
Since the main road to the gates was blocked by workmen, he ran round the lake, knocked down two men who tried to bar his way and followed, at a distance of thirty yards, by a veritable horde of pursuers howling like mad men, ran into a small kitchen garden, surrounded on every side by a wall of a most discouraging height.
“Confound it!” he muttered. “I’m well shut in! I’m going to be the stag at bay, hang it! … What a mull I’ve made of it!”
Above the left wall of the kitchen garden rose the village church and the graveyard ran right into the interior of the garden in the shape of a small enclosed space, which formerly served as a burial ground of the lords of Gueures. Tall yew trees hung over its wall. As he ran round this enclosure a small door in the wall was half opened, an arm was stretched out to bar his way, a little hand seized him by the arm; and the astonished Ralph was drawn into a dark arch way by a woman who shut the door in the face of his pursuers, and turned the key in the lock.
He divined rather than saw Josephine Balsamo.
“Come on!” she said, plunging into the middle of the yews.
Another door was opened in the opposite wall of the little close; it let them into the village churchyard.
By the apse of the church stood an old-fashioned barouche of the kind one hardly ever sees nowadays anywhere except in the country. Harnessed to it were two thin, badly groomed horses. On the box sat a gray-bearded coachman whose bent back stuck out under his blue blouse.
Ralph and the Countess jumped into the carriage. No one had seen them. She said to the coachman:
“Take the road to Luneray and Doudeville. Be quick!”
The church was at the end of the village; and by taking the road to Luneray, they avoided passing any of the cottages. A long stretch of road rose in a steepish hill to the plateau. The two lean steeds developed the speed of first-class trotters and went up the hill at an astonishing pace.
The interior of this shabby-looking barouche was spacious, comfortable, and protected from the eyes of the indiscreet by shutters of wooden trellis-work. Indeed it conveyed such an impression of intimacy that Ralph fell on his knees and gave vent freely to his amorous exaltation.
He was choking with joy. Whether the Countess was offended or not, he decided that this second meeting, taking place in such extraordinary circumstances and after the night of the rescue, established relations between them which permitted him to omit several stages and begin the conversation with a formal declaration of love.
He did so at once and in an airy fashion which would have disarmed the most prudish of women.
“You? Is it indeed you? But how dramatic! At the very moment at which the hunt was going to tear me to pieces, Josephine Balsamo springs from the shadows and rescues me in my turn. Ah, how happy I am! How I love you! I have loved you for years … for a hundred years! Yes, I’ve a hundred years of love in me. … An old love as young as you. And as beautiful as you are lovely! … And you are so lovely! … One cannot look on you without being moved to the depths of one’s being. … It’s a joy; but at the same time it fills one with despair to think that, whatever happens, one will never be able to grasp your beauty in all its fullness. Your expression, your smile, their deepest meanings will forever elude us.”
He quivered and murmured: “Oh, your eyes rest on me! You do not turn them away! You’re not angry with me then? You allow me to tell you of my love?”
“Suppose I bid you get out?” she said, opening the door.
“I should refuse.”
“And if I were to call the coachman to my aid?”
“I should kill him.”
“And if I got out myself?”
“I should continue the declaration of my love along the road.”
She burst out laughing.
“You have an answer for everything,” she said. “Stay where you are; but no more nonsense! Tell me what happened to you and why those men were pursuing you.”
He had gained his end.
“Yes, I will tell you everything since you do not repulse me. … Since you accept my love.”
“But I accept nothing,” she said, still laughing. “You pile declaration on declaration and you do not even know me.”
“I don’t know you?”
“You hardly saw me that night—just by the light of a lantern.”
“And didn’t I see you during the day before that night? Didn’t I have time to admire you during that abominable ordeal at La Haie d’Etigues?”
She turned suddenly serious and gazed at him earnestly.
“Oh, you were present, were you?” she said quickly.
“I was there, all right,” he said with triumphant cheerfulness.
