"_Plait-il?_" cried the Champenois, advancing from his hut.
"Pray has Monsieur Pont Orson passed here to-day?" demanded the Norman.
"Monsieur Pont Orson! Monsieur Pont Orson!" cried the Champenois, trying to assume an air of thought, and rummaging in his empty head for a name that never was in it: "Pardie, I do not know."
"I mean," said the Norman, "the same little gentleman in grey, who stopped here ten days agone, to have a bay horse shod, as he was coming back from--what's the name of the place?"
"No!" cried the Champenois; "he was going, he was not coming, when he had his horse shod."
"But I say he was coming," replied the Norman. "How the devil do you know he was going?"
"_Mais dame!_" exclaimed the other; "How do I know he was going? Why, did not he ask me how far it was to Mesnil? and if he had not been going, why should he wish to know?"
"_Mais dame! ouai!_" cried the Champenois. "He was dressed all in grey, and had a bay horse, on whose hoof I put as nice a piece of iron as ever came off an anvil; and he asked me how far it was to Mesnil, and whereabouts was the old Castle of St. Loup. '_Monsieur Pont Orson! Monsieur Pont Orson? Dieu! qui aurait déviné que c'étoit Monsieur Pont Orson?_'"
"_Mais je vous dis que ce n'étoit pas lui_," cried the Norman, putting spurs to his horse. "_Allons, chérie. Adieu, Monsieur Champenois, adieu!_--Ha! ha! ha!" cried he, when at a little distance. "_Ganache!_ he has told me all that I wanted to know. Then he did go to Mesnil--the old Chateau of St. Loup! What could he want there? I've heard of this old chateau."
"But who is Monsieur Pont Orson?" demanded Louise, interrupting the broken cogitations of her husband.
"Nay, I know not, _ma chère_," replied her husband. "The man in the moon, with a corkscrew to tap yon fool's brains, and draw out all I wanted to know about the person whom I told you I was seeking for Monsieur de Chavigni.--It was a mere name. But there, I see a steeple on yon hill in the wood. Courage! we shall soon reach it. It is not above a league.--That must be Mesnil."
The Norman's league, however, proved at least two, and Louise, though a good horsewoman, was complaining most bitterly of fatigue, when they arrived in the little street of Mesnil St. Loup, and, riding up to the dwelling of our old friend Gaultier the innkeeper, alighted under the withered garland that hung over the door.