At their advance a miserable embrowned figure, barefooted and half clad in a ragged haik, roped round his waist, threw himself before the fair-haired child, crying out in imperfect Arabic, ‘Spare her, spare her, great Lord! much is to be won by saving her.’
‘We are come to save her,’ said Arthur in French. ‘Maître Hébert, do you not know me?’
Hubert looked up. ‘M. Arture! M. Arture! Risen from the dead!’ he cried, threw himself into the young man’s arms, and burst out into a vehement sob; but in a second he recovered his manners and fell back, while Estelle looked up.
‘M. Arture,’ she repeated. ‘Ah! is it you? Then, is my mamma alive and safe?’
‘Alas! no,’ replied Arthur; ‘but your little brother is safe and well at Algiers, and this good man, the Marabout, is come to deliver you.’
‘My mamma said you would protect us, and I knew you would come, like Mentor, to save us,’ said Estelle, clasping her hands with ineffable joy. ‘Oh, Monsieur! I thank you next to the good God and the saints!’ and she began fervently kissing Arthur’s hand. He turned to salute the Abbé, but was shocked to see how much more vacant the poor gentleman’s stare had become, and how little he seemed to comprehend.
‘Ah!’ said Estelle, with her pretty, tender, motherly air, ‘my poor uncle has never seemed to understand since that dreadful day when they dragged him and Maître Hébert out into the wood and were going to kill them. And he has fever every night. But, oh, M. Arture, did you say my brother was safe?’ she repeated, as if not able to dwell enough upon the glad tidings.
‘And I hope you will soon be with him,’ said Arthur. ‘But, Mademoiselle, let me present you to the Grand Marabout, a sort of Moslem Abbé, who has come all this way to obtain your release.’
He led Estelle forward, when she made a courtesy fit for her grandmother’s salon, and in very fluent Cabeleyze dialect gave thanks for the kindness of coming to release her, and begged him to excuse her uncle, who was sick, and, as you say here, ‘stricken of Allah.’
The little French demoiselle’s grace and politeness were by no means lost on the Marabout, who replied to her graciously; and at the sight of her reading M. Dessault’s letter, which the interpreter presented to her, one of the suite could not help exclaiming, ‘Ah! if women such as this will be went abroad in our streets, there would be nothing to hope for in Paradise.’