The Companions of Jehu, Alexandre Dumas [romance book recommendations TXT] 📗

Everyone knows the impression generally produced at a table d’hôte by new-comers. All eyes were bent upon them and the conversation, which seemed to be quite animated, stopped.

The guests consisted of the frequenters of the hotel, the traveller whose carriage was waiting harnessed at the door, a wine merchant from Bordeaux, sojourning temporarily at Avignon for reasons we shall shortly relate, and a certain number of travellers going from Marseilles to Lyons by diligence.

The new arrivals greeted the company with a slight inclination of the head, and sat down at the extreme end of the table, thereby isolating themselves from the other guests by three or four empty places. This seemingly aristocratic reserve redoubled the curiosity of which they were the object; moreover, they were obviously people of unquestionable distinction, although their garments were simple in the extreme. Both wore hightop boots and breeches, long-tailed coats, travelling overcoats and broad-brimmed hats, the usual costume of the young men of that day. But that which distinguished them from the fashionables of Paris, and even of the provinces, was their long straight hair, and their black stocks buckled round the neck, military fashion. The Muscadins—that was the name then given to young dandies—the Muscadins wore dogs’ ears puffing at the temples, the rest of the hair combed up tightly in a bag at the back, and an immense cravat with long floating ends, in which the chin was completely buried. Some had even extended this reaction to powder.

As to the personality of the two young men, they presented two diametrically opposite types.

The elder of the two, he who, as we have already remarked, had taken the initiative several times, and whose voice, even in its most familiar intonations, denoted the habit of command, was about thirty years of age. His black hair was parted in the middle, falling straight from his temples to his shoulders. He had the swarthy skin of a man who has travelled long in southern climes, thin lips, a straight nose, white teeth, and those hawk-like eyes which Dante gives to Cæsar. He was short rather than tall, his hand was delicate, his foot slender and elegant. His manner betrayed a certain awkwardness, suggesting that he was at the moment wearing a costume to which he was not accustomed, and when he spoke, his hearers, had they been beside the Loire instead of the Rhone, would have detected a certain Italian accent in his pronunciation.

His companion seemed to be some three or four years younger than he. He was a handsome young man with a rosy complexion, blond hair and light blue eyes, a straight, firm nose and prominent but almost beardless chin. He was perhaps a couple of inches taller than his companion, and though his figure was somewhat above medium height, he was so well proportioned, so admirably free in his movements, that he was evidently if not extraordinarily strong, at least uncommonly agile and dexterous. Although attired in the same manner and apparently on a footing of equality, he evinced remarkable deference to the dark young man, which, as it could not result from age, was doubtless caused by some inferiority of position. Moreover, he called his companion citizen, while the other addressed him as Roland.

These remarks which we make to initiate the reader more profoundly into our story, were probably not made as extensively by the guests at the table d’hôte; for after bestowing a few seconds of attention upon the new-comers, they turned their eyes away, and the conversation, interrupted for an instant, was resumed. It must be confessed that it concerned a matter most interesting to the travellers—that of the stoppage of a diligence bearing a sum of sixty thousand francs belonging to the government. The affair had occurred the day before on the road from Marseilles to Avignon between Lambesc and Pont-Royal.

At the first words referring to this event, the two young men listened with unmistakable interest. It had taken place on the same road which they had just followed, and the narrator, the wine merchant of Bordeaux, had been one of the principal actors in the scene on the highroad. Those who seemed the most curious to hear the details were the travellers in the diligence which had just arrived and was soon to depart. The other guests, who belonged to the locality, seemed sufficiently conversant with such catastrophes to furnish the details themselves instead of listening to them.

“So, citizen,” said a stout gentleman against whom a tall woman, very thin and haggard, was crowding in her terror. “You say that the robbery took place on the very road by which we have just come?”

“Yes, citizen, between Lambesc and Pont-Royal. Did you notice the spot where the road ascends between two high banks? There are a great many rocks there.”

“Yes, yes, my friend,” said the wife, pressing her husband’s arm, “I noticed it; I even said, as you must remember, ‘Here is a bad place; I would rather pass here by day than at night.’”

“Oh! madame,” said a young man whose voice affected to slur his r’s after the fashion of the day, and who probably assumed to lead the conversation at the table d’hôte, on ordinary occasions, “you know the Companions of Jehu know no day or night.”

“What! citizen,” asked the lady still more alarmed, “were you attacked in broad daylight?”

“In broad daylight, citizeness, at ten o’clock in the morning.”

“And how many were there?” asked the stout gentleman.

“Four, citizen.”

“Ambushed beside the road?”

“No; they were on horseback, armed to the teeth and masked.”

“That’s their custom,” said the young frequenter of the table d’hôte, “and they said, did they not: ‘Do not defend yourself, we will not harm you. We only want the government money.’”

“Word for word, citizen.”

“Then,” continued this well-informed young man, “two dismounted from their horses, flinging their bridles to their comrades, and commanded the conductor to deliver up the money.”

“Citizen,” said the stout man astonished, “you describe the thing as if you had seen it.”

“Monsieur was there, perhaps,” said one of the travellers, half in jest, half in earnest.

“I do not know, citizen, whether in saying that you intend a rudeness,” carelessly observed the young man who had so pertinently and obligingly come to the narrator’s assistance, “but my political opinions are such that I do not consider your suspicion an insult. Had I had the misfortune to be among those attacked, or the honor to be one of those who made the attack, I should admit it as frankly in the one case as in the other. But yesterday at ten o’clock, at precisely the moment when the diligence was stopped, twelve miles from here, I was breakfasting quietly in this very seat. And, by-the-bye, with the two citizens who now do me the honor to sit beside me.”

“And,” asked the younger of the two travellers who had lately joined the table, whom his companion called Roland, “how many men were you in the diligence?”

“Let me think; we were—yes, that’s it—we were seven men and three women.”