‘When did you thus full in with them?’

‘It was on one of the days of the week of Pentecost,’ said Ercole.  ’It is at that time I frequent fairs in those parts, to gather my little harvest on the maidens’ heads.’

‘Parbleu! class not my niece with those sordid beings, man,’ said the Chevalier, angrily.  ’Here is your price’—­tossing a heavy purse on the table—­’and as much more shall await you when you bring me sure intelligence where to find my niece.  You understand; and mark, not one word of the gentleman you saw here.  You say she believes him dead?’

’The Illustrissimo must remember that she never dropped her disguise with me, but I fully think that she supposed herself a widow.  And I understand the Eccellenza, she is still to think so.  I may be depended on.’

‘You understand,’ repeated the Chevalier, ’this sum shall reward you when you have informed me where to find her—­as a man like you can easily trace her from Montauban.  If you have any traffickings with her, it shall be made worth your while to secure the pearls for the family; but, remember, the first object is herself, and that she should be ignorant of the existence of him whom she fancied her husband.’

’I see, Signor; and not a word, of course, of my having come from you.  I will discover her, and leave her noble family to deal with her.  Has the Illustrissimo any further commands?’

‘None,’ began the Chevalier; then, suddenly, ’This unhappy infant—­ is it healthy?  Did it need any of your treatment?’

’Signor, no.  It was a fair, healthy bambina of a year old, and I heard the mother boasting that it had never had a day’s illness.’

’Ah, the less a child has to do in the world, the more is it bent on living,’ said the Chevalier with a sigh; and then, with a parting greeting, he dismissed the Italian, but only to sup under the careful surveillance of the steward, and then to be conveyed by early morning light beyond the territory where the affairs of Ribaumont were interesting.

But the Chevalier went through a sleepless night.  Long did he pace up and down his chamber, grind his teeth, clench his fist and point them at his head, and make gestures of tearing his thin gray locks; and many a military oath did he swear under his breath as he thought to what a pass things had come.  His brother’s daughter waiting on an old Huguenot bourgeois, making sugar-cakes, selling her hair!  And what next?  Here was she alive after all, alive and disgracing herself; alive—­yes, both she and her husband—­to perplex the Chevalier, and force him either to new crimes or to beggar his son!  Why could not the one have really died on the St. Bartholomew, or the other at La Sablerie, instead of putting the poor Chevalier in the wrong by coming to live again?