But Madame only backed and curtseyed, a mischievous light in her eyes.

“A thousand thanks, Monsieur!” she said, “but you are more ready than I!” And she remained by the door.

“I have come to you through all!” he cried, speaking loudly because of a humming in his ears.  “They are lying in the streets!  They are dying, are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing!  But I have come through all to you!”

She curtseyed anew.  “So I see, Monsieur!” she answered.  “I am flattered!” But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness.  And he took offence.

“I say, Madame, I have come to you!” he repeated.  “And you do not seem pleased!”

She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly.

“Oh yes,” she said.  “I am pleased, M. de Tignonville.  It is what I intended.  But tell me how you have fared.  You are not hurt?”

“Not a hair!” he cried boastfully.  And he told her in a dozen windy sentences of the adventure of the haycart and his narrow escape.  He wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.

“Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?” she said.  And when he did not answer, “I understand,” she continued, nodding and speaking as to a child.  And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order.

She addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville’s ear her voice seemed to fall to a whisper.  Her figure—­she was small and fairy-like—­began to sway before him; and then in a moment, as it seemed to him, she was gone, and he was seated at a table, his trembling fingers grasping a cup of wine which the elderly servant who had admitted him was holding to his lips.  On the table before him were a spit of partridges and a cake of white bread.  When he had swallowed a second mouthful of wine—­which cleared his eyes as by magic—­the man urged him to eat.  And he fell to with an appetite that grew as he ate.

By-and-by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame’s women were peering at him through the open doorway.  He looked that way and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the door.  It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why she did not come and serve him herself.

But for a while longer the savour of the roasted game took up the major part of his thoughts; and when prudence warned him to desist, and he sat back, satisfied after his long fast, he was in no mood to be critical.  Perhaps—­for somewhere in the house he heard a lute—­Madame was entertaining those whom she could not leave?  Or deluding some who might betray him if they discovered him?