"I pray backwards in church too, dame, but I could never get sight of him there, as you do: something always blinds me!" and the two old sinners laughed together at the thought of the devil's litanies they recited in the church.
"But how to get to Beaumanoir? I shall have to walk, as you did, Mere Malheur. It is a vile road, and I must take the byway through the forest. It were worth my life to be seen on this visit," said La Corriveau, conning on her fingers the difficulties of the by- path, which she was well acquainted with, however.
"There is a moon after nine, by which hour you can reach the wood of Beaumanoir," observed the crone. "Are you sure you know the way, Dame Dodier?"
"As well as the way into my gown! I know an Indian canotier who will ferry me across to Beauport, and say nothing. I dare not allow that prying knave, Jean Le Nocher, or his sharp wife, to mark my movements."
"Well thought of, Dame Dodier; you are of a craft and subtlety to cheat Satan himself at a game of hide and seek!" The crone looked with genuine admiration, almost worship, at La Corriveau as she said this; "but I doubt he will find both of us at last, dame, when we have got into our last corner."
"Well, vogue la galere!" exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. "Let it go as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you must be hungry, Mere, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say grace in nomine Domini, and choke you."
The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mere Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angelique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to kill the unhappy Caroline.
"I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's," muttered La Corriveau to herself, "and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two of that," and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La Voisin.
All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found means to communicate to Angelique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that night.
The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angelique; she trembled and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible failure or discovery.
She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mere Malheur a little basket containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might have been plucked in the garden of Eden.
La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room, the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close, overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the room even at midday.
