Upon this reflection he swore softly but most fervently into his becoming beard.  He was well fed up with adventures, thank you, and could have done very well without this latest.  And especially at a time when he desired nothing so much as to be permitted to remain the footloose wanderer in a strange land, a bird of passage without ties or responsibilities.

He thought it devilish hard that one may never do a service to another without incurring a burden of irksome obligations to the served; that bonds of interest forged in moments of unpremeditated and generous impulse are never readily to be broken.

Now because Chance had seen fit to put him in the way of saving a hapless party of sightseers from robbery or worse, he found himself hopelessly committed to take a continuing interest in them.  It appeared that their home was a chateau somewhere in the vicinity of Nant.  Well, after their shocking experience, and with the wounded man on their hands—­and especially if La Roque-Sainte-Marguerite told the story one confidently expected—­Duchemin could hardly avoid offering to see them safely as far as Nant.  And once there he would be definitely in the toils.  He would have to stop in the town overnight; and in the morning he would be able neither in common decency to slip away without calling to enquire after the welfare of d’Aubrac and the tranquillity of the ladies, nor in discretion to take himself out of the way of the civil investigation which would inevitably follow the report of what had happened in Montpelier.

No:  having despatched a bandit to an end well-earned, it now devolved upon Andre Duchemin to satisfy Society and the State that he had done so only with the most amiable motives, on due provocation, to save his own life and possibly the lives of others.

He had premonitions of endless delays while provincial authorities wondered, doubted, criticised, procrastinated, investigated, reported, and—­repeated.

And then there was every chance that the story, thanks to the prominence of the persons involved, for one made no doubt that the names of Sevenie and Montalais and d’Aubrac ranked high in that part of the world—­the story would get into the newspapers of the larger towns in the department.  And what then of the comfortable pseudonymity of Andre Duchemin?  Posed in an inescapable glare of publicity, how long might he hope to escape recognition by some acquaintance, friend or enemy?  Heaven knew he had enough of both sorts scattered widely over the face of Europe!

It seemed hard, indeed....

But it was—­of course! he assured himself grimly—­all a matter of fatality with him.  Never for him the slippered ease of middle age, the pursuit of bourgeois virtues, of which he had so fondly dreamed in Meyrueis.  Adventures were his portion, as surely as humdrum and eventless days were many another’s.  Wars might come and wars might go:  but his mere presence in its neighbourhood would prove enough to turn the Palace of Peace itself into Action Front.