There is but Voban. Yet he will bear you this, if it
be possible, for he comes to-night to adorn my fashionable brother.
The poor Mathilde I have not seen of late. She has vanished. When
they began to keep me close, and carried me off at last into the
country, where we were captured by the English, I could not see
her, and my heart aches for her.
God bless you, Robert, and farewell. How we shall smile, when
all this misery is done! Oh, say we shall, say we shall smile, and
all this misery cease. Will you not take me home? Do you still
love thy wife, thy
ALIXE?
I bade Voban come to me at the little house behind the church
that night at ten o'clock, and by then I should have arranged some
plan of action. I knew not whether to trust Gabord or no. I was
sorry now that I had not tried to bring Clark with me. He was
fearless, and he knew the town well; but he lacked discretion,
and that was vital.
Two hours of waiting, then came a scene which is burned into my
brain. I looked down upon a mass of people, soldiers, couriers of
the woods, beggars, priests, camp followers, and anxious gentlefolk,
come from seclusion, or hiding, or vigils of war, to see a host of
powers torture a young girl who by suffering had been made a woman
long before her time. Out in the streets was the tramping of armed
men, together with the call of bugles and the sharp rattle of drums.
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