1The door opened into a stone-flagged hall; a tall thin man in a blue coat with a glistening white cravat stood there to welcome them, and at his side was a young woman, her shoulders bare in the lamplight. There were three others, too—maidservants and a butler, Hornblower fancied vaguely, as he advanced into the hall under the burden of Bush’s weight. On a side table the lamplight caught the ivory butts of a pair of pistols, evidently laid there by their host on his deciding that his nocturnal visitors were harmless. Hornblower and Brown halted again for a moment, ragged and dishevelled and daubed with snow, and water began to trickle at once to the floor from their soaking garments; and Bush was between them, one foot in a grey worsted sock sticking out under the hem of his flannel nightshirt. Hornblower’s constitutional weakness almost overcame him again and he had to struggle hard to keep himself from giggling as he wondered how these people were explaining to themselves the arrival of a nightshirted cripple out of a snowy night.

2At least his host had sufficient self-control to show no surprise.

3“Come in, come in,” he said. He put his hand to a door beside him and then withdrew it. “You will need a better fire than I can offer you in the drawing-room. Felix, show the way to the kitchen—I trust you gentlemen will pardon my receiving you there? This way, sirs. Chairs, Felix, and send the maids away.”

4It was a vast low-ceilinged room, stone-flagged like the hall. Its grateful warmth was like Paradise; in the hearth glowed the remains of a fire, and all round them kitchen utensils winked and glittered. The woman without a word piled fresh billets of wood upon the fire and set to work with bellows to work up a blaze. Hornblower noticed the glimmer of her silk dress; her piled-up hair was golden, nearly auburn.

5“Cannot Felix do that, Marie, my dear? Very well, then. As you will,” said their host. “Please sit down, gentlemen. Wine, Felix.”

6They lowered Bush into a chair before the fire. He sagged and wavered in his weakness, and they had to support him; their host clucked in sympathy.

7“Hurry with those glasses, Felix, and then attend to the beds. A glass of wine, sir? And for you, sir? Permit me.”

8The woman he had addressed as “Marie” had risen from her knees, and withdrew silently; the fire was crackling bravely amid its battery of roasting spits and cauldrons. Hornblower was shivering uncontrollably, nevertheless, in his dripping clothes. The glass of wine he drank was of no help to him; the hand he rested on Bush’s shoulder shook like a leaf.

9“You will need dry clothes,” said their host. “If you will permit me I will—”

10He was interrupted by the reentrance of the butler and Marie, both of them with their arms full of clothes and blankets.

11“Admirable!” said their host. “Felix, you will attend these gentlemen. Come, my dear.”

12The butler held a silken nightshirt to the blaze while Hornblower and Brown stripped Bush of his wet clothes and chafed him with a towel.

13“I thought I should never be warm again,” said Bush, when his head came out through the collar of the nightshirt. “And you, sir? You shouldn’t have troubled about me. Won’t you change your clothes now, sir? I’m all right.”

14“We’ll see you comfortable first,” said Hornblower. There was a fierce perverse pleasure in neglecting himself to attend to Bush. “Let me look at that stump of yours.”

15The blunt seamed end still appeared extraordinarily healthy. There was no obvious heat or inflammation when Hornblower took it in his hand, no sign of pus exuding from the scars. Felix found a cloth in which Hornblower bound it up, while Brown wrapped him about in a blanket.

16“Lift him up now, Brown. We’ll put him into bed.”

17Outside in the flagged hall they hesitated as to which way to turn, when Marie suddenly appeared from the left-hand door.

18“In here,” she said; her voice was a harsh contralto. “I have had a bed made up on the ground floor for the wounded man. I thought it would be more convenient.”

19One maid—a gaunt old woman, rather—had just taken a warming-pan from between the sheets; the other was slipping a couple of hot bottles into the bed. Hornblower was impressed by Marie’s practical forethought. He tried with poor success to phrase his thanks in French while they lowered Bush into bed and covered him up.

20“God, that’s good, thank you, sir,” said Bush.

21They left him with a candle burning at his bedside—Hornblower was in a perfect panic now to strip off his wet clothes before that roaring kitchen fire. He towelled himself with a warm towel and slipped into a warm woollen shirt; standing with his bare legs toasting before the blaze he drank a second glass of wine. Fatigue and cold fell away from him, and he felt exhilarated and lightheaded as a reaction. Felix crouched before him tendering him a pair of trousers, and he stepped into them and suffered Felix to tuck in his shirttails and button him up—it was the first time since childhood that he had been helped into his trousers, but this evening it seemed perfectly natural. Felix crouched again to put on his socks and shoes, stood to buckle his stock and help him on with waistcoat and coat.

22“Monsieur le Comte and Madame la Vicomtesse await monsieur in the drawing-room,” said Felix—it was odd how, without a word of explanation, Felix had ascertained that Brown was of a lower social level. The very clothes he had allotted to Brown indicated that.

23“Make yourself comfortable here, Brown,” said Hornblower.

24“Aye aye, sir,” said Brown, standing at attention with his black hair in a rampant mass—only Hornblower had had an opportunity so far of using the comb.

25Hornblower stepped in to look at Bush, who was already asleep, snoring faintly at the base of his throat. He seemed to have suffered no ill effects from his immersion and exposure—his iron frame must have grown accustomed to wet and cold during twenty-five years at sea. Hornblower blew out the candle and softly closed the door, motioning to the butler to precede him. At the drawing-room door Felix asked Hornblower his name, and when he announced him Hornblower was oddly relieved to hear him make a sad hash of the pronunciation—it made Felix human again.

26His host and hostess were seated on either side of the fire at the far end of the room, and the Count rose to meet him.

27“I regret,” he said, “that I did not quite hear the name which my major-domo announced.”

28“Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s ship Sutherland,” said Hornblower.

29“It is the greatest pleasure to meet you, Captain,” said the Count, side-stepping the difficulty of pronunciation with the agility to be expected of a representative of the old régime. “I am Lucien Antoine de Ladon, Comte de Graçay.”

30The men exchanged bows.

31“May I present you to my daughter-in-law? Madame la Vicomtesse de Graçay.”

32“Your servant, ma’am,” said Hornblower, bowing again, and then felt like a graceless lout because the English formula had risen to his lips by the instinct the action prompted. He hurriedly racked his brains for the French equivalent, and ended in a shamefaced mumble of “Enchanté.”

33The Vicomtesse had dark eyes in the maddest contrast with her nearly auburn hair. She was stoutly—one might almost say stockily—built, and was somewhere near thirty years of age, dressed in black silk which left sturdy white shoulders exposed. As she curtseyed her eyes met his in complete friendliness.

34“And what is the name of the wounded gentleman whom we have the honour of entertaining?” she asked; even to Hornblower’s unaccustomed ear her French had a different quality from the Count’s.

35“Bush,” said Hornblower, grasping the import of the question with an effort. “First Lieutenant of my ship. I have left my servant, Brown, in the kitchen.”

36“Felix will see that he is comfortable,” interposed the Count. “What of yourself, Captain? Some food? A glass of wine?”

37“Nothing, thank you,” said Hornblower. He felt in no need of food in this mad world, although he had not eaten since noon.

38“Nothing, despite the fatigues of your journey?”

39There could hardly be a more delicate allusion than that to Hornblower’s recent arrival through the snow, drenched and battered.

40“Nothing, thank you,” repeated Hornblower.

41“Will you not sit down, Captain?” asked the Vicomtesse.

42They all three found themselves chairs.

43“You will pardon us, I hope,” said the Count, “if we continue to speak French. It is ten years since I last had occasion to speak English, and even then I was a poor scholar, while my daughter-in-law speaks none.”

44“Bush,” said the Vicomtesse. “Brown. I can say those names. But your name, Captain, is difficult. Orrenblor—I cannot say it.”

45“Bush! Orrenblor!” exclaimed the Count, as though reminded of something. “I suppose you are aware, Captain, of what the French newspapers have been saying about you recently?”

46“No,” said Hornblower. “I should like to know, very much.”

47“Pardon me, then.”

48The Count took up a candle and disappeared through a door; he returned quickly enough to save Hornblower from feeling too self-conscious in the silence that ensued.

49“Here are recent copies of the Moniteur,” said the Count. “I must apologise in advance, Captain, for the statements made in them.”

50He passed the newspapers over to Hornblower, indicating various columns in them. The first one briefly announced that a dispatch by semaphore just received from Perpignan informed the Ministry of Marine that an English ship of the line had been captured at Rosas. The next was the amplification. It proclaimed in triumphant detail that the hundred-gun ship Sutherland which had been committing acts of piracy in the Mediterranean had met a well-deserved fate at the hands of the Toulon fleet directed by Admiral Cosmao. She had been caught unawares and overwhelmed, and had “pusillanimously hauled down the colours of perfidious Albion under which she had committed so many dastardly crimes.” The French public was assured that her resistance had been of the poorest, it being advanced in corroboration that only one French ship had lost a topmast during the cannonade. The action took place under the eyes of thousands of the Spanish populace, and would be a salutary lesson to those few among them who, deluded by English lies or seduced by English gold, still cherished notions of resistance to their lawful sovereign King Joseph.

51Another article announced that the infamous Captain Hornblower and his equally wicked lieutenant, Bush, had surrendered in the Sutherland, the latter being one of the few wounded in the encounter. All those peace-loving French citizens who had suffered as a result of their piratical depredations could rest assured that a military court would inquire immediately into the crimes these two had committed. Too long had the modern Carthage sent forth her minions to execute her vile plans with impunity! Their guilt would soon be demonstrated to a world which would readily discriminate between the truth and the vile lies which the poisoned pens in Canning’s pay so persistently poured forth.

52Yet another article declared that as a result of Admiral Cosmao’s great victory over the Sutherland at Rosas English naval action on the coasts of Spain had ceased, and the British army of Wellington, so imprudently exposed to the might of the French arms, was already suffering seriously from a shortage of supplies. Having lost one vile accomplice in the person of the detestable Hornblower, perfidious Albion was about to lose another on Wellington’s inevitable surrender.

53Hornblower read the smudgy columns in impotent fury. “A hundred-gun ship,” forsooth, when the Sutherland was only a seventy-four and almost the smallest of her rate in the list! “Resistance of the poorest”! “One topmast lost”! The Sutherland had beaten three bigger ships into wrecks and had disabled a fourth before surrendering. “One of the few wounded”! Two-thirds of the Sutherland’s crew had given life or limb, and with his own eyes he had seen the blood running from the scuppers of the French flagship. “English naval action had ceased”! There was not a hint that a fortnight after the capture of the Sutherland the whole French squadron had been destroyed in the night attack on Rosas Bay.

54His professional honour had been impugned; the circumstantial lies had been well told, too—that subtle touch about only one topmast being lost had every appearance of verisimilitude. Europe might well believe that he was a poltroon as well as a pirate, and he had not the slightest chance of contradicting what had been said. Even in England such reports must receive a little credit—most of the Moniteur’s bulletins, especially the naval ones, were reproduced in the English press. Lady Barbara, Maria, his brother captains, must all be wondering at the present moment just how much credence should be given to the Moniteur’s statements. Accustomed as the world might be to Bonaparte’s exaggerations, people could hardly be expected to realise that in this case everything said—save for the bare statement of his surrender—had been completely untrue. His hands shook a little with the passion that consumed him, and he was conscious of the hot flush in his cheeks as he looked up and met the eyes of the others. It was hard to grope for his few French words while he was so angry.

55“He is a liar!” he spluttered at length. “He dishonours me!”

56“He dishonours everyone,” said the Count, quietly.

57“But this—but this—” said Hornblower, and then gave up the struggle to express himself in French. He remembered that while he was in captivity in Rosas he had realised that Bonaparte would publish triumphant bulletins regarding the capture of the Sutherland, and it was only weakness to be enraged by them now that he was confronted by them.

58“Will you forgive me,” asked the Count, “if I change the subject and ask you a few personal questions?”

59“Certainly.”

60“I presume you have escaped from an escort which was taking you to Paris?”

61“Yes,” said Hornblower.

62“Where did you escape?”

63Hornblower tried to explain that it was at a point where a by-road ran down to the river’s edge, six kilometres on the farther side of Nevers. Haltingly, he went on to describe the conditions of his escape, the silencing of Colonel Caillard, and the wild navigation of the river in the darkness.

64“That must have been about six o’clock, I presume?” asked the Count.

65“Yes.”

66“It is only midnight now, and you have come twenty kilometres. There is not the slightest chance of your escort seeking you here for some time. That is what I wanted to know. You will be able to sleep in tranquillity tonight, Captain.”

67Hornblower realised with a shock that he had long taken it for granted that he would sleep in tranquillity, at least as far as immediate recapture was concerned; the atmosphere of the house had been too friendly for him to feel otherwise. By way of reaction, he began to feel doubts.

68“Are you going to—to tell the police we are here?” he asked; it was infernally difficult to phrase that sort of thing in a foreign language and avoid offence.

69“On the contrary,” said the Count, “I shall tell them, if they ask me, that you are not here. I hope you will consider yourself among friends in this house, Captain, and that you will make your stay here as long as is convenient to you.”

70“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much,” stammered Hornblower.

71“I may add,” went on the Count, “that circumstances—it is too long a story to tell you—make it quite certain that the authorities will accept my statement that I know nothing of your whereabouts. To say nothing of the fact that I have the honour to be mayor of this commune, and so represent the Government, even though my adjoint does all the work of the position.”

72Hornblower noticed his wry smile as he used the word “honour,” and tried to stammer a fitting reply, to which the Count listened politely. It was amazing, now Hornblower came to think about it, that chance should have led him to a house where he was welcomed and protected, where he might consider himself safe from pursuit, and sleep in peace. The thought of sleep made him realise that he was desperately tired, despite his excitement. The impassive face of the Count, and the friendly face of his daughter-in-law, gave no hint as to whether or not they too were tired; for a moment Hornblower wrestled with the problem which always presents itself the first evening of one’s stay in a strange house—whether the guest should suggest going to bed or wait for a hint from his host. He made his resolve, and rose to his feet.

73“You are tired,” said the Vicomtesse—the first words she had spoken for some time.

74“Yes,” said Hornblower.

75“I will show you your room, sir. Shall I ring for your servant? No?” said the Count.

76Out in the hall, after Hornblower had bowed good-night, the Count indicated the pistols still lying on the side table.

77“Perhaps you would care to have those at your bedside?” he asked politely. “You might feel safer?”

78Hornblower was tempted, but finally he refused the offer. Two pistols would not suffice to save him from Bonaparte’s police should they come for him.

79“As you will,” said the Count leading the way with a candle. “I loaded them when I heard your approach, because there was a chance that you were a party of réfractaires—young men who evade the conscription by hiding in the woods and mountains. Their number has grown considerably since the latest decree anticipating the conscription. But I quickly realised that no gang meditating mischief would proclaim its proximity with shouts. Here is your room, sir. I hope you will find here everything you require. The clothes you are wearing appear to fit so tolerably that perhaps you will continue to wear them tomorrow? Then I shall say good-night. I hope you will sleep well.”

80The bed was deliciously warm as Hornblower slid into it and closed the curtains. His thoughts were pleasantly muddled; disturbing memories of the appalling swoop of the little boat down the long black slope of water at the fall, and of his agonised battle for life in the water, were overridden by mental pictures of the Count’s long, mobile face and of Caillard bundled in his cloak and dumped down upon the carriage floor. He did not sleep well, but he could hardly be said to have slept badly.