Some three-quarters of an hour later the _Trois Frères_ was warping slowly out of the basin, and La Vireville, immense relief in his heart, and the hungry Anne-Hilarion on his knee, was giving the child, as they awaited breakfast, a further lesson in the things that he was not to say. CHAPTER X HAPPENINGS IN A POSTCHAISE (1) Anne-Hilarion was sorry to say good-bye to the _Trois Frères_ at Caen, and all the way up the river from the little port at Ouistreham he sat quietly on deck with a pensive expression. That the vessel's speed at sea had not been very noticeably greater than that with which she now approached the spires of the town distressed him not at all. Everything about her had been delightful, from her dolphin figurehead to her old-fashioned poop, and he only regretted that M. le Chevalier had not allowed him to chatter to her crew as much as he desired. La Vireville too owed the old barque gratitude. Whether her master really believed his story or no, he had kept to his contract, and asked few supplementary questions. It had been a fine breezy morning when the émigré stood on her deck as she lumbered along the coast towards Dieppe, and looked up at the tricolour beating at the mizen, reflecting that it was the first time he had ever sailed beneath this parvenu flag of his country. Two or three miles out at sea a couple of frigates were visible, the rearguard of the Brest fleet. Against those vessels that flag was their talisman. But he had not looked at it with love for all that. * * * * * The alluring prospect of a long ride in a postchaise had been purposely held out to the Comte de Flavigny as he regretfully left the _Trois Frères_, clutching the striped and polished foreign shell which the captain had given him at parting. It was true that there were some rather unpleasant formalities to be gone through first, in a place which he was told was M. le Maire's office, where a man with a red, white, and blue scarf tied in a great bow--a man whom he instinctively disliked--asked M. le Chevalier a great many questions, and looked at him, Anne-Hilarion, very suspiciously. At last, however, he wrote something on the papers which M. le Chevalier had produced, and then they went to a little hôtel and had a meal, and presently Anne was being assisted into a two-horsed postchaise not quite like those he had seen in England. "All's well that ends well!" said M. le Chevalier, his mouth relaxing, as with great crackings of the postilion's whip they rolled through the streets of Caen. "They were suspicious of thy good uncle, Anne . . . Annibal, I should say. Imagine, they were disinclined to believe what he said--he who has always been noted for his veracity. But the papers of thy other uncle--the one we left behind at Abbeville, in . . . in bed--convinced them at last."