It was only bit by bit that old Louise succeeded in dragging all this news out of Adèle. The girl’s habitual reticence was put to a severe test by all the questions and cross-questions, whilst Fleurette stood by wide-eyed, distraught with the idea of these horrible complications in which her poor Amédé was being involved. But she would not show any emotion before Adèle, she felt vaguely that her foster-sister, never very expansive towards her, had suddenly become almost inimical. So she waited until Louise had extracted all the news she could out of the taciturn girl, and curtly ordered her back into the kitchen; then as the old woman was about to follow, Fleurette caught her by the hand.
“Louise,” she said in a tone of almost desperate entreaty, “dear, kind Louise, I must go to Sisteron—at once.”
“To Sisteron?” old Louise exclaimed frowning. “Heavens alive, what is the child thinking of now?”
“Of M’sieu’ Amédé, dear Louise,” Fleurette replied. “You heard what Adèle said. They have taken him to Sisteron.”
“And what of it?” Louise asked—but she asked for form’s sake only, she knew quite well what was going on in Fleurette’s head.
“Only this, dear Louise,” the girl said with a little note of defiance piercing through her shyness. “We—that is Amédé and I—are tokened to one another.”
“Tokened?” the old woman exclaimed with a gasp. “Since when?”
“Since last night.”
“And without your father’s consent? Well! of all the—”
“Chéri Bibi would approve,” Fleurette asserted, “if he knew.”
Old Louise shrugged her shoulders. She would not trust herself to speak because the child looked so sweet and so innocent, and her pretty blue eyes were so full of tears, that Louise felt an almost unconquerable desire to take hold of her and hug her to her breast. Which act of weakness would have seriously impaired her authority at this critical juncture. She was wondering what to say next—for in truth she more than suspected that the child was right, and that Citizen Armand would not object to those two young things being tokened to one another, when Fleurette broke in gently:
“So you see, dear, kind Louise, that I must go to Sisteron—now—at once.”
“But Holy Virgin, what to do?”
“To see Amédé and comfort him.”
“They won’t let you see him, child.”
“Then I will find chéri Bibi,” Fleurette retorted calmly. “He has a great deal more authority than you and I credit him with, Louise. He can order whom he likes not only to let me see Amédé, but even to set him free.”
“He would be very angry,” Louise argued, “to see you wandering about the high roads alone, while all those soldiers and riffraff are about.”
Fleurette gave a quaint little smile.
“Bibi’s anger against me never lasts very long,” she said. “Anyway I will risk it. Louise dear, will you come with me?”
“I?”
“Of course, you said that Bibi would be angry if I roamed about the high roads alone.”
Louise stood squarely in front of Fleurette, looked straight into those blue eyes, which never before had held such a determined glance. Fleurette could not help smiling at the old woman’s look of perplexity; she was the typical hen seeing her brood of ducklings take their first plunge in the pond.
“If you won’t come with me, Louise dear,” the girl said simply, “I shall have to go alone.”
“Get along with ye, for an obstinate wench,” Louise retorted gruffly. But the next moment she had already changed her tone. “Get on your thick woollen stockings, child,” she said, “and your buckled shoes, and your brown cloak, while I put a few things in a basket for our dinner. If we don’t hurry, we shan’t be in Sisteron before nightfall.”
“M’sieu’ Duflos will lend us his cart or a horse,” Fleurette rejoined gleefully, “but I won’t be long, dear, kind Louise.”
And swift as a young hare she ran out and then up the outside staircase to her room under the overhanging climbing rose.
A few minutes later the two women started on their way. Fleurette had on her dark kirtle, her thick stockings and buckled shoes; her fair hair was tucked away underneath her frilled mobcap. She carried her own cloak and Louise’s on her arm, whilst Louise tramped beside her, carrying a basket in which she had hastily packed a piece of bread, some cheese, and two hard-boiled eggs. If M’sieu’ Duflos, the butcher, would lend them his cart, they would be in Sisteron by midday; but in any case they would be there before dark.
XIV
But M’sieu’ Duflos had no cart to lend them—that is he had no horse. Didn’t Mam’zelle Fleurette and Ma’ame Louise remember? Some of those brigands had been round the week before and requisitioned every horse they could lay their hands on all over the countryside; old nags, mares with foals, butchers’ cobs, nothing came amiss to them, nothing was sacred. Oh those soldiers! Were they not the curse of the country? And what difference there was between the so-called revolutionary army and a pillaging band of pirates, M’sieu’ Duflos, the butcher, really couldn’t say.
All this he told the two women, to the accompaniment of wide gestures of his powerful arms and much shrugging of his broad shoulders. It was Fleurette who had put the question breathlessly to him, as soon as she had caught sight of him standing on the door of his shop, blocking it with his massive bulk.
“A horse? A cart? Alas! it was impossible! Ah! those brigands! those
