From behind my curtains I watched Malpertuis ride out of the yard, saying,
in answer to a parting question of the landlord, who had come upon the
scene, that he would breakfast at Beaugency.
Then, as he rode down the street, he of a sudden raised his discordant
voice and sang to the accompaniment of his horse's hoofs. And the burden
of his song ran thus:
A frondeur wind
Got up to-day,
'Gainst Mazarin
It blows, they say.
I listened in amazement to his raven's voice.
Whither was he bound, I asked myself, and whence a haste that made him set
out fasting, with an anti-cardinalist ditty on his lips, and ride two
leagues to seek a breakfast in a village that did not hold an inn where a
dog might be housed in comfort?
Like Eug?ne de Canaples, he also travelled towards a goal that he little
dreamt of. And so albeit the one went south and the other north, these two
men were, between them, drawing together the thread of this narrative of
mine, as anon you shall learn.
We reached Paris at dusk three days later, and we went straight to my old
lodging in the Rue St.
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