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CHAPTER XXIX. THE ESCAPE.
In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean,
dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect
more informing than a blind wall, two men sat, fretting; or, rather, one
man sat, his chin resting on his hand, while his companion, less patient
or more sanguine, strode ceaselessly to and fro. In the first despair of
capture--for they were prisoners--they had made up their minds to the
worst, and the slow hours of two days had passed over their heads without
kindling more than a faint spark of hope in their breasts. But when they
had been taken out and forced to mount and ride--at first with feet tied
to the horses' girths--they had let the change, the movement, and the
open air fan the flame. They had muttered a word to one another, they
had wondered, they had reasoned. And though the silence of their
guards--from whose sour vigilance the keenest question drew no
response--seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with their knowledge of the man
into whose hands they had fallen, should have quenched the spark, these
two, having special reasons, the one the buoyancy of youth, the other the
faith of an enthusiast, cherished the flame. In the breast of one indeed
it had blazed into a confidence so arrogant that he now took all for
granted, and was not content.
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