He had also seven soldiers, well-armed and mounted as light-horse, who never left him, and who were the cream of his _cornette_, or troop of picked men. We may translate, in this way, by equivalent terms to those in use at this time, the titles and different grades of this tribe of foreign adventurers, whose organization, equipment and staff each leader modified, according to his whim or his power. Mario had not erred in estimating at twenty-five men the band accompanying the captain, added to that already at the inn under his lieutenant's command. "Here's a filthy tavern!" cried the captain in a disdainful tone, scraping the heavy soles of his great muddy boots on the clean and glistening rungs of a walnut chair. "What sort of a fire is that for travellers by night? Are you short of wood in this barrack?" "Alas! monsieur," said the servant, tossing an armful of wood on the fire, which was already burning brightly, "we can do no better; this is a flat country and wood is scarce." [Illustration: _MACABRE AND HIS BAND AT THE INN._ "_Look you, my toothless beauty; this is the way we warm ourselves when wood is dear!_" _And he tossed the chair on which he had just wiped his feet into the fire._] "There's a stupid girl, and uglier, if possible, than her mistress!" rejoined the courteous Macabre. "Look you, my toothless beauty; this is the way we warm ourselves when wood is dear!" And he tossed the chair on which he had just wiped his feet into the fire. "And now, lieutenant," he continued coolly, turning to Saccage, "you say there's a little ragamuffin here, sent by those----" "Here you are at last!" replied Saccage, raising his foot to impel Mario more rapidly toward the venerable captain. Mario eluded the outrage by darting nimbly under the _reitre's_ foot, and, standing in front of the other brute, said to him coolly: "I am here, and this is my message; for I gave your lieutenant the countersign. You cannot stay in this inn, because a large body of armed men is coming here to-night. You cannot attack the château, which is well guarded. You must go back where you came from, or you will get into trouble; Sancho sends this message to you." "Your Sancho is truly an old ass," retorted the captain. And he added, accompanying each word with an oath which it is hardly worth while to repeat in order to convey an idea of the charm of his conversation: "I haven't travelled a hundred leagues through a hostile country to go back empty-handed. Go and tell the man who sent you that Captain Macabre knows the country better than he does and cares devilish little about a well-guarded château! Tell him that I have forty horsemen, for there are fifteen more behind me, who are coming on in charge of _my wife_, and that forty _reitres_ are as good as an army. Come, off with you, and go to the devil, gypsy!"