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The Works of Alexandre Dumas: The Page of the Duke of Savoy
The Works of Alexandre Dumas The Page of the Duke of Savoy Author:Alexandre Dumas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. IN WHICH THE READER MAKES THE MOST AMPLE ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HEROES WE HAVE INTRODUCED TO HIM. On the morning of this same day, the 5th of May, 1555... more », a little troop of four men, who seemed to form a part of the garrison of Doullens, had left that city by slipping out of the Arras gate, as soon as this gate had been, we will not say open, but half-open. These four men, muffled up in long cloaks, equally serviceable for concealing their weapons and guarding them from the stiff morning breeze, followed, with all sorts of precautions, the banks of the little river Authie, until they reached its source. From thence they diverged in the direction of the little chain of hills we have already so often mentioned, continued their course, always with the same precautions, along its western slope, and, after a two hours' journey, at last arrived at the outskirts of the forest of Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise. There, one of them, who appeared more familiar than the others with the locality, took command of the little band, and, guiding himself at one time by a tree more leafy or more devoid of branches than its fellows, at another, renewing his acquaintance with a rock or a sheet of water, he at length reached the grotto to which we ourselves conducted the reader in the beginning of the preceding chapter. Then he made a sign to his companions to wait a moment, looked with a certain anxiety at some grass that seemed freshly trampled on, at some branches that seemed recently broken, and, throwing himself flat on his stomach, and crawling like a snake, disappeared within the cavern. His comrades, who stayed outside, heard the echo of his voice; but the tones denoted nothing alarming. He was interrogating the recesses of the grotto; and as these recesses answered him only by silence...« less