Now and again Doltaire drew out a box
and took a pinch of snuff, and once, coolly and curiously, he
walked up to the most stalwart prisoner and felt his pulse, then
to the weakest, whose limbs and body had stiffened as though dead.
"Ninety-seven! Ninety-eight! Ninety-nine!" growled Gabord, and
then came Doltaire's voice:
"Stop! Now fetch some brandy."
The prisoners were loosened, and Doltaire spoke sharply to a
soldier who was roughly pulling one man's shirt over the excoriated
back. Brandy was given by Gabord, and the prisoners stood, a most
pitiful sight, the weakest livid.
"Now tell your story," said Doltaire to this last.
The man, with broken voice and breath catching, said that they
had erred. They had been hired to kidnap Madame Cournal, not
Mademoiselle Duvarney.
Doltaire's eyes flashed. "I see, I see," he said aside to me.
"The wretch speaks truth."
"Who was your master?" he asked of the sturdiest of the
villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them.
To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another
answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the
Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery to be imprisoned
for life.
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