Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and Sword — page 94: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

82 THE LIGHTING OF A PASSION. the two letters, with a recommendation to diligence; then leaving Monsieur Mériset a note for his sister Claudine, he imparted to him the necessity of his going away. ‘Ah! my God! will you not return?’’ said the landlord. ‘I will return, and I pray you to keep my room for me along with these ten louis, which will be yours if I am not back infifteen days. I will only ask you to say noth- ing, either of what you have seen or of my departure, if perchance some curious person question you.”’ ‘‘T understand,’’ said Monsieur Mériset, who scented un- der this mystery an affair of state, ‘‘Il understand and will be silent. ”’ Belle-Rose undressed, put on some clothes belonging to Nephew Christopher, armed himself with a stick, and quitted the Rue du Pot-de-Fer St. Sulpice. ‘*It is to Monsieur de Naucrais I owe my sergeant’s hal- berd,’’ he said to himself; ‘‘it is to him I shall return it.”’ CHAPTER XI. THE LIGHTING OF A PASSION. At daybreak Belle-Rose found himself already three or four leagues beyond St. Denis, upon the route to Flanders. The country smiled in the white light of the morning, and joyous girls passed singing along the road. Around Belle- Rose all was light and gayety; within all was gloom and sadness. He had lost his sweetheart, he had just lost his liberty, he was going, undoubtedly, to lose his life. His heart swelled under this wave of bitter thoughts. He had struggled, he was conquered. Butthe voice of his con- science did not reproach him. About noon he stopped in a species of cabaret; he had taken nothing since the even- ing before The landlady, a petulant young woman, cooked an omelette in a turn of the hand. ‘*You are just in time, my boy,’’ she said to him. ‘‘A quarter of an hour later, and you would have run the risk of no longer finding either egg-shells or a crust of bread. Where the police pass nothing remains.’”’ ‘*Ah!’’ said Belle-Rose, ‘‘you are expecting the police of the king?’’ : ‘‘Half a dozen rascals who areas thirsty as sand and hun- gry as dogs. But here they are advancing from the end of the plain. Do you see them, with their muskets upon their shoulders?’’ Eomicbooks (fo)