What winds conveyed this hurry to the
grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village,
with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth
no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some
grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds?
Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his
life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the
fountain.
All the people of the village were at the
fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but
showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows,
hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking
stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying
their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of
the people of the chaateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the
taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side
of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with
nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group
of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his
blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up
of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of
the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new
version of the German ballad of Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face
too many, up at the chaateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again
in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for
which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the
Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified.
Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife.
Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
`Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from
JACQUES.'
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