I affected to see nothing,
however, but went by him easily, and into the room, drawing off
my gauntlets as entered. The dicers, from their seats beside a
table on the hearth, gazed at me, turned to stone. I took up a
glass, filled it, and drank it off. "Now I am better!" I said.
"But this is not the warmest of welcomes, M. de Bareilles."
He muttered something, looking fearfully from one to another of
us; and, his hand shaking, filled a glass and pledged me. The
wine gave him courage and impudence: he began to speak; and
though his hurried sentences and excited manner must have
betrayed him to the least suspicious, we pretended to see
nothing, but rather to congratulate ourselves on his late hours
and timely preparations. And certainly nothing could have seemed
more cheerful in comparison with the squalid inn and miry road
from which we came than this smiling feast; if death had not
seemed to my eyes to lurk behind it.
"I thought it likely that you would lie at Saury," he said, with
a ghastly smile.
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