"Well! well!" he said as an officer came into the room.
"The sentry who was wounded last night is conscious, sir."
"I had forgotten. For the moment I thought you had come about another matter. Yes; I will come and see him. And the jailer, has he said anything?"
"Maintains that wings or a rope was necessary to reach the window, and therefore the prisoner must have had help from without. He declares there was no rope in the cell, and says he didn't notice wings on the spy. Those are his own words."
"It pleases him to be humorous over a serious matter," said the Count.
He had forgotten all about the escaped spy; now he remembered him, and began to speculate. Last night he had heard nothing of the arrest until they had come to tell him of the escape. Then he had been chiefly interested in the fact that a man had broken out of the South Tower. Examination had shown that one of the window bars was loose, but until the sentry could tell his tale, there was no certainty that the prisoner had escaped that way. Then the Count regretted the escape, because it robbed him of an opportunity of pleasing the people of Vayenne, whose hatred of spies was hereditary. It would have pleased him to gratify them by hanging this man high above the great gate. That would certainly have been his fate before ever he had chance to speak a word in his own defence. In the pressure of other thoughts the matter had slipped from his mind until the officer's entrance, and as is ever the case with an anxious schemer, he sought to fit this spy into the intricate design of his thoughts.
As the Count crossed the small court-yard toward the quarters where the sentry lay, he saw Father Bertrand, and ambling by his side was the dwarf of St. Etienne.
"Are we on the same errand, father?" said the Count.
"I am going to see the wounded sentry."