If it were known in England that he was alive it would be known in France, and a stricter search would be instituted for him. It would be terribly dangerous. Maria would draw small profit from the knowledge that he was alive if that knowledge were to cause his death.
I think it would not be advisable, said Hornblower.
There was a strange duality in his mind; the Hornblower for whom he could plan so coolly, and whose chances of life he could estimate so closely, was a puppet of the imagination compared with the living, flesh and blood Hornblower whose face he had shaved that morning. He knew by experience now that only when a crisis came, when he was swimming for his life in a whirlpool, or walking a quarterdeck in the heat of action, that the two blended togetherthat was the moment when fear came.
I hope, Captain, said the Count, that this news has not disturbed you too much?
Not at all, sir, said Hornblower.
I am delighted to hear it. And perhaps you will be good enough to give Madame la Vicomtesse and myself the pleasure of your company again to-night at whist, you and Mr. Bush?
Whist was the regular
way of passing the evening. The Counts delight in the game was another bond of sympathy between him and Hornblower. He was not a player of the mathematical variety, as was Hornblower. Rather did he rely upon a flair, an instinctive system of tactics. It was marvellous how often his blind leads found his partners short suit and snatched tricks from the jaws of the inevitable, how often he could decide intuitively upon the winning play when confronted by a dilemma. There were rare evenings when this faculty would desert him, and when he would sit with a rueful smile losing rubber after rubber to the remorseless precision of his daughter-in-law and Hornblower. But usually his uncanny telepathic powers would carry him triumphantly through, to the exasperation of Hornblower if they had been opponents, and to his intense satisfaction if they had been partnersexasperation at the failure of his painstaking calculations, or satisfaction of their complete vindication.
The Vicomtesse was a good well-taught player of no brilliance whose interest in the game, Hornblower suspected, was entirely due to her devotion to her father-in-law. It was Bush to whom these evenings of whist were a genuine penance. He disliked card games of any sorteven the humble vingt-et-unand in the supreme refinement of whist he was hopelessly at a loss. Hornblower had cured him of some of his worst habitsof asking, for instance, What are trumps? halfway through every handhad insisted on his counting the cards as they fell, on his learning the conventional leads and discards, and by so doing had made of him a player whose presence three good players could just tolerate rather than miss their evenings amusement; but the evenings to him were periods of agonized, hard-breathing concentration, of flustered mistakes and shamefaced apologymisery made no less acute by the fact that conversation was carried on in French in which he could never acquire any facility. Bush mentally classed together French, whist, and spherical trigonometry as subjects in which he was too old ever to make any further progress, and which he would be content, if he were allowed, to leave entirely to his admired captain.
For Hornblowers French was improving rapidly, thanks to the need for continual use of the language. His defective ear would never allow him to catch the trick of the accenthe would always speak with the tonelessness of the foreignerbut his vocabulary was widening and his grammar growing more certain and he was acquiring a fluency in the idiom which more than once earned him a pretty compliment from his host. Hornblowers pride was held in check by the astonishing fact that below stairs Brown was rapidly acquiring the same fluency. He was living largely with French people, toowith Felix and his wife the housekeeper, and their daughter Louise the maid, and, living over the stables across the yard, the family of Bertrand, who was Felixs brother and incidentally the coachman; Bertrands wife was the cook, with two daughters to help her in the kitchen, while one of her young sons was footman under Felix and the other two worked in the stables under their father.
Hornblower had once ventured to hint to the Count that the presence of himself and the others might well be betrayed to the authorities by one of all these servants, but the Count merely shook his head with a serene confidence that could not be shaken.
They will not betray me, he said, and so intense was his conviction on the point that it carried conviction to Hornblowerand the better he came to know the Count the more obvious it became that no one who knew him well would ever betray him. And the Count added with a wry smile
You must remember, too, Captain, that here I am the authorities.
Hornblower could allow his mind to subside into security and sloth again after thata sense of security with a fantastic quality about it that savoured of a nightmare. It was unreal to be mewed for so long within four walls, deprived of the wide horizons and the endless variety of the sea. He could spend his mornings tramping up and down the stable yard, as though it were a quarterdeck and as though Bertrand and his sons chattering about their duties were a ships crew engaged on their mornings deck-washing. The smell of the stables and the land winds which came in over the high walls were a poor substitute for the keen freshness of the sea. He spent hours in a turret window of the house, with a spyglass which the Count found for him, gazing round the countryside; the desolate vineyards in their winter solitude, the distant towers of Neversthe ornate Cathedral tower and the graceful turrets of the Gonzaga palace; the rushing black river, its willows half submergedthe