“I will go back,” M. Etienne cried, darting to the door.  But Monsieur laid forcible hands on him.

“Not you, Etienne.  You were hurt yesterday; you have not closed your eyes for twenty-four hours.  I don’t want a dead son.  I blame you not for the failure; not another man of us all would have come so near success.”

“Dolt!  I should have known he could not deal honestly,” M. Etienne cried.  “I should have known he would trick me.  But I did not think to doubt the crest.  I should have opened it there in the inn, but it was Lemaitre’s sealed packet.  However, Peyrot sat down to my dinner:  I can be back before he has finished his three kinds of wine.”

“Stop, Etienne,” Monsieur commanded.  “I forbid you.  You are gray with fatigue.  Vigo shall go.”

M. Etienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze in his eyes flickered out, and he made obedient salute.

“So be it.  Let him go.  I am no use; I bungle everything I touch.  But he may accomplish something.”

He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his face in his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened.  A statue-maker might have copied him for a figure of Defeat.

“Go find Vigo,” Monsieur bade me, “and then get you to bed.”

I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.

I too smarted, but mine was the private’s disappointment, not the general’s who had planned the campaign.  The credit of the rescue was none of mine; no more was the blame of failure.  I need not rack myself with questioning, Had I in this or that done differently, should I not have triumphed?  I had done only what I was told.  Yet I was part of the expedition; I could not but share the grief.  If I did not wet my pillow with my tears, it was because I could not keep awake long enough.  Whatever my sorrows, speedily they slipped from me.

* * * * *

I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then wondered whether, after all, I had waked.  Here, to be sure, was Marcel’s bed, on which I had lain down; there was the high gable-window, through which the westering sun now poured.  There was the wardrobe open, with Marcel’s Sunday suit hanging on the peg; here were the two stools, the little image of the Virgin on the wall.  But here was also something else, so out of place in the chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure it was real.  At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign wood, beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man.  It was about as large as my lord’s despatch-box, bound at the edges with shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of leaves and flowers.  Beside the box were set three shallow trays, lined with blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith’s work-glittering chains, linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of yellow snakes with green eyes, buckles with ivory teeth, glove-clasps thick with pearls, ear-rings and finger-rings with precious stones.