She used the word gentilhomme, which conveyed the sense of nobility of blood, and the Marquis acknowledged the introduction with one of those graceful bows that Arthur hated, because they made him doubly feel the stiffness of his own limitation.  He was glad to linger with Lanty, who was looking in wonder at the grim buildings.

‘And did the holy Father live here?’ said he.  ’Faith, and ’twas a quare taste he must have had; I wonder now if there would be vartue in a bit of a stone from his palace.  It would mightily please my old mother if there were.’

‘I thought it was the wrong popes that lived here,’ suggested Arthur.

Lanty looked at him a moment as if in doubt whether to accept a heretic suggestion, but the education received through the Abbe came to mind, and he exclaimed —

’May be you are in the right of it, sir; and I’d best let the stones alone till I can tell which is the true and which is the false.  By the same token, little is the difference it would make to her, unless she knew it; and if she did, she’d as soon I brought her a hair of the old dragon’s bristles.’

Lanty found another day or two’s journey bring him very nearly in contact with the old dragon, for at Tarascon was the cave in which St. Martha was said to have demolished the great dragon of Provence with the sign of the cross.  Madame de Bourke and her children made a devout pilgrimage thereto; but when Arthur found that it was the actual Martha of Bethany to whom the legend was appended, he grew indignant, and would not accompany the party.  ’It was a very different thing from the martyrs of Lyon and Vienne!  Their history was credible, but this—­’

‘Speak not so loud, my friend,’ said M. de Varennes.  ’Their shrines are equally good to console women and children.’

Arthur did not quite understand the tone, nor know whether to be gratified at being treated as a man, or to be shocked at the Marquis’s defection from his own faith.

The Marquis, who was able to accompany his sister as far as Montpelier, was amused at her two followers, Scotch and Irish, both fine young men--almost too fine, he averred.

’You will have to keep a careful watch on them when you enter Germany, sister,’ he said, ’or the King of Prussia will certainly kidnap them for his tall regiment of grenadiers.’

’O brother, do not speak of any more dangers:  I see quite enough before me ere I can even rejoin my dear husband.’

A very serious council was held between the brother and sister.  The French army under Marshal Berwick had marched across on the south side on the Pyrenees, and was probably by this time in the county of Rousillon, intending to besiege Rosas.  Once with them all would be well, but between lay the mountain roads, and the very quarter of Spain that had been most unwilling to accept French rule.