358 An Adventure near Granville. [ApRIL, 
* Certainly—though I should have been much better pleased not to 
have played so secondary a part in a matter where, as it seems to me, 
I ought to be the principal.” 
“I trust, in the end, you will have reason to think otherwise. At all 
events, I have your word that you will be passive ?” 
« Most assuredly.” 
“ T am obliged to you for this confidence. Yet one thing more. You 
will be good enough not to breathe a syllable to any one of what has 
passed between us. Should your servant be curious ¢ 
“I will be silent,” I said, interrupting him, “ though I have not the 
slightest reason to doubt her fidelity.” 
“ Nor do I doubt it ; but she might chatter, or she might be alarmed ; 
and in either case she would equally defeat my projects.” 
“ The first,” I replied, “is impossible, as she has no one in the 
house, except myself, to talk to; the second, I grant, is likely enough, 
though I should not think Madelon was a woman to start at trifles either. 
I will, however, do as you wish me, and the rather as I cannot be sup- 
posed to be a competent judge of measures, of which I am utterly 
unable to divine the motives.” ; 
With this understanding I was dismissed, and returned home, not well 
knowing what to think of my first introduction to French justice. There 
was a degree of mystery in the whole proceeding that I might have 
laughed at had it involved less serious personal consequences. As it was, 
I sate down gravely enough to my half-spoilt dinner, Madelon besieging 
me all the time with a thousand questions in the style of familiarity so 
common among French servants. These were not direct, but put in the 
way of conjecture, as—“ Ce maudit Préfet! -Est-il possible, he trouble 
Monsieur! G—d damn! I fear you find him un peu béte.” 
« Pretty well for that, Madelon.” 
« Ah! c'est un misérable! But, may be, he shall be trompé by his 
spies?” 
« Not unlikely.” 
« Ah! I suppose he fancy Monsieur come to cut de heads off to all de 
Bourbons.” 
« That would, indeed, be doing things on a grand scale; but the 
Sous-préfet has not half your fancy.” 
« Ah, oui! C’est un homme béte—vraiment béte. I should no sur- 
prise if he take Monsieur for a smuggler.” 
« No.” 
* Tant mieux! Dere is hard law against ces pauvres diables de 
smuggelers. Peutétre he hear. Monsieur’s garden a été.volé, and wants 
to do you justice. Ence cas, Je laime beaucoup.” 
« Nor that either.” 
“ Diable !” exclaimed Madelon, driven by impatience out of her 
polite conjectures—< Diable! Pourquoi then ce béte, did he send his 
gens-d’armes after Monsieur ?” 
« The fault was your’s, Madelon.” 
« Mine!” said, or almost shrieked, Madelon, turning deadly pale— 
« Mine !” 
Seeing the poor. girl so seriously alarmed, I was angry with myself, 
and told her, truly enough, I had spoken in jest only. 
«In jest!” said Madelon, rapidly repeating my words; “ Monsieur 
was in jest!” 
«“ No more, Madelon—and that to punish you for your idle curiosity. 
Vv 
he _ 
