a
Charite-sur-Loire for his mistress' love-letters, which he conjured me
to return to her--when he grew speechless in the middle of a sentence;
but from his last gesture, I understood that the fatal key would be my
passport in his mother's house. It troubled him that he was powerless to
utter a single word to thank me, for of my wish to serve him he had no
doubt. He looked wistfully at me for a moment, then his eyelids drooped
in token of farewell, and his head sank, and he died. His death was the
only fatal accident caused by the overturn.

"But it was partly his own fault," the coachman said to me.

At La Charite, I executed the poor fellow's dying wishes. His mother was
away from home, which in a manner was fortunate for me. Nevertheless, I
had to assuage the grief of an old woman-servant, who staggered back at
the tidings of her young master's death, and sank half-dead into a chair
when she saw the blood-stained key. But I had another and more dreadful
sorrow to think of, the sorrow of a woman who had lost her last love;
so I left the old woman to her prosopopeia, and carried off the precious
correspondence, carefully sealed by my friend of the day.

The Countess' chateau was some eight leagues beyond Moulins, and then
there was some distance to walk across country. So it was not exactly an
easy matter to deliver my message. For divers reasons into which I need
not enter, I had barely sufficient money to take me to Moulins. However,
my youthful enthusiasm determined to hasten thither on foot as fast
as possible. Bad news travels swiftly, and I wished to be first at the
chateau. I asked for the shortest way, and hurried through the field
paths of the Bourbonnais, bearing, as it were, a dead man on my back.
The nearer I came to the Chateau de Montpersan, the more aghast I felt
at the idea of my strange self-imposed pilgrimage. Vast numbers of
romantic fancies ran in my head. I imagined all kinds of situations in
which I might find this Comtesse de Montpersan, or, to observe the laws
of romance, this _Juliette_, so passionately beloved of my traveling
companion. I sketched out ingenious answers to the questions which she
might be supposed to put to me. At every turn of a wood, in every
beaten pathway, I rehearsed a modern version of the scene in which
Sosie describes the battle to his lantern. To my shame be it said, I had
thought at first of nothing but the part that _I_ was to play, of my
own cleverness, of how I s