Such was not, however, altogether the aspect of the little auberge at Bourgoin. The village was too small to have a regular inn, or _gite_, and the homely symbol of a bush, suspended from a long pole, thrust forth horizontally from the front of the building, was the only sign that it could boast. The landlord and landlady were in their green old age, and were what they term in France _bonasse_, though that word has been applied to a beast who, if one may judge by his look, is of a very opposite sort of disposition to that which I wish to describe. They were, in short, good-humoured, honest country-people; and when the landlady beheld a considerable company of horsemen draw in their bridles at her door, with a young lady and her maid in a litter in the midst, her first thought was really not of self-interest, but of what she could best do to make her fair guest happy and comfortable during the time that she was about to stay in her dwelling. The Count de Meyrand sprang to the side of the litter which contained Isabel de Brienne; and, as if with an instinctive insight into their lord's wishes, all his attendants but one, who was holding back the curtain, and one at the head of the nearest horse, kept aloof while the lady descended. "Monsieur de Meyrand," said Isabel de Brienne, as she quitted the litter, "I cannot help repeating again that it is much against my inclination I have come hither. If you did not choose to conduct me, as I asked you, on the direct road to Grenoble, you might, at least, have suffered me to remain for the night at Latour." "Indeed, dear lady," replied the count, still with an air of perfect deference, "it would have been dangerous for you to do so. There, but a few leagues from Chambery, and still less from Beauvoisin, we should have been entirely at the mercy of the enemy. In regard to Grenoble, I only besought you to pause till you could hear my reasons. You are too much fatigued to attend to them now; but, ere you set out to-morrow, you shall hear them at full." "Your politeness, my good lord," replied Isabel de Brienne, with an air of grief and vexation, "is somewhat compulsory." Thus saying, she advanced towards the landlady, who had kept back at a sign from one of the count's attendants, but not so far as to prevent her from noting all that had passed; the ears of aubergistes and aubergistes' wives acquiring by long and peculiar practice a facility of hearing everything and not hearing anything, according to circumstances, which is truly astonishing.