Numerous enough--they
numbered a score of armed men--to defy the lawless bands which had their
lairs in the huge forest of Orleans, they halted where they pleased: at
mid-day under a grove of chestnut-trees, or among the willows beside a
brook; at night, if they willed it, under God's heaven. Far, not only
from Paris, but from the great road, with its gibbets and pillories--the
great road which at that date ran through a waste, no peasant living
willingly within sight of it--they rode in the morning and in the
evening, resting in the heat of the day. And though they had left Paris
with much talk of haste, they rode more at leisure with every league.
For whatever Tavannes' motive, it was plain that he was in no hurry to
reach his destination. Nor for that matter were any of his company.
Madame St. Lo, who had seized the opportunity of escaping from the
capital under her cousin's escort, was in an ill-humour with cities, and
declaimed much on the joys of a cell in the woods. For the time the
coarsest nature and the dullest rider had had enough of alarums and
conflicts.
The whole company, indeed, though it moved in some fashion of array with
an avant and a rear-guard, the ladies riding together, and Count Hannibal
proceeding solitary in the midst, formed as peaceful a band, and one as
innocently diverted, as if no man of them had ever grasped pike or blown
a match.
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