When Tignonville presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and
six of his riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the
rear. On which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called
over his shoulder the eternal "Forward, Monsieur, en avant!" and
sullenly, hating the man and his master more deeply every hour,
Tignonville was forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his
heart.
Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling
wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther they
left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it
seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were
little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the
Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of
her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might have
been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which they
had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church appeared; and
Badelon, drawing rein, cried-"Beaupreau, Madame! We stay an hour!"
It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With
sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles,
while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought, and
hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly, and
when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when he
gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting this
dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But Badelon
said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die, as it
pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their saddles, and
jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the gloaming, through the
darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of low hills and narrow
plains which grew more wild and less cultivated as they advanced.
Fortunately the horses had been well saved during the long leisurely
journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly. When they at last
unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood within a mile of Clisson,
they had placed some forty miles between themselves and Angers.