“You know it, perhaps,” continued the lady. “Well, the lord cardinal thought, that a young girl being in the question, a female should be found to accompany her; he told the curate to look for one, and the curate kindly came to me——”
“Oh! may God reward you for your goodness!”
“And the curate desired me to encourage you, my poor child, to relieve you from uneasiness at once, and to make you understand, how the Lord has miraculously preserved you.”
“Oh! miraculously indeed, through the intercession of the Virgin!”
“He told me to comfort you, to advise you to pardon him who has done you this evil, to rejoice that God has shown compassion towards him, and even to pray for him; for, besides its being a duty, you will derive comfort from it to your own heart.”
Lucy replied with a look which expressed assent as clearly as if she had made use of words, and with a sweetness which words could not have expressed.
“Worthy young woman!” resumed the friend. “And as your curate was also in our village, the lord cardinal judged it best to send him with us, thinking that he might be of some assistance. I had already heard that he was a poor sort of a timid man; and on this occasion, he has been wholly taken up with himself, like a hen with one chick.”
“And he——he who is thus changed——who is he?”
“How! do you not know?” said the good dame, repeating his name.
“Oh! merciful heaven!” cried Lucy. For many times had she heard this name repeated with horror, in more than one story, in which he had appeared like the Ogre of the fairy tale. At the idea of having been in his terrible power, and of now being under his protection,—at the thought of such peril, and such deliverance, in reflecting who this man was that had appeared to her so ferocious, and then so humble and so gentle, she was lost in astonishment, and could only exclaim, from time to time, “Oh! merciful Heaven!”