And though she had to bear what she had to bear, and do that from which
her soul shrank! The woman, indeed, within her continued to cry out
against this tragedy ever renewed in her path, against this necessity for
choosing evil, or good, ease for herself or life for others. But the
moving heavens, pointing onward to a time when good and evil alike should
be past, strengthened a nature essentially noble; and before she slept no
shame and no suffering seemed--for the moment at least--too great a price
to pay for the lives of little children. Love had been taken from her
life; the pride which would fain answer generosity with generosity--that
must go, too!
She felt no otherwise when the day came, and the bustle of the start and
the common round of the journey put to flight the ideals of the night.
But things fell out in a manner she had not pictured. They halted before
noon on the north bank of the Loir, in a level meadow with lines of
poplars running this way and that, and filling all the place with the
soft shimmer of leaves. Blue succory, tiny mirrors of the summer sky,
flecked the long grass, and the women picked bunches of them, or, Italian
fashion, twined the blossoms in their hair. A road ran across the meadow
to a ferry, but the ferryman, alarmed by the aspect of the party, had
conveyed his boat to the other side and hidden himself.
Presently Madame St. Lo espied the boat, clapped her hands and must have
it. The poplars threw no shade, the flies teased her, the life of a
hermit--in a meadow--was no longer to her taste.
"Let us go on the water!" she cried. "Presently you will go to bathe,
Monsieur, and leave us to grill!"
"Two livres to the man who will fetch the boat!" Count Hannibal cried.
In less than half a minute three men had thrown off their boots, and were
swimming across, amid the laughter and shouts of their fellows. In five
minutes the boat was brought.
It was not large and would hold no more than four. Tavannes' eye fell on
Carlat.
"You understand a boat," he said. "Go with Madame St. Lo. And you, M.
La Tribe."
"But you are coming?" Madame St. Lo cried, turning to the Countess. "Oh,
Madame," with a curtsey, "you are not? You--"
"Yes, I will come," the Countess answered.
"I shall bathe a short distance up the stream," Count Hannibal said. He
took from his belt the packet of letters, and as Carlat held the boat for
Madame St. Lo to enter, he gave it to the Countess, as he had given it to
her yesterday. "Have a care of it, Madame," he said in a low voice, "and
do not let it pass out of your hands. To lose it may be to lose my
head."