Some weeks afterwards Don Rafaele Marchez considered that it was safe for him to liberate his friend from the prison in which he could not recover his health. He took him, in the night, up to a room which had windows looking out upon an unfrequented street, and warned him not to cross the threshold--at all events in the daytime, by reason that the French were quartered in the house.
Edgar could not explain to himself the irresistible desire which one day seized him to go out into the corridor. At the very instant that he did so the door of the room opposite opened, and a French officer came out meeting him.
"Why how came you here, friend Edgar!" cried the Frenchman. "Welcome a thousand times!" Edgar had at once recognized him as Colonel la Combe of the Imperial Guard. Chance had brought this Colonel, just at the time of Germany's terrible degradation, to his uncle's house, where he himself was living, having had to abandon his military career. La Combe came from the south of France. Through the tenderness (by no means a common characteristic of his nation) with which he dealt with those who were so bitterly tried, he succeeded in overcoming the deep dislike--nay, the irreconcilable hatred, which was so firmly rooted in Edgar's soul against the arrogant foe, and finally, by virtue of certain traits of character, which placed beyond all doubt the true nobility of la Combe's nature, in gaming his friendship.
"Edgar," cried the Colonel, "what has brought you to Valenzia?"
It may be imagined how sorely the question embarrassed Edgar. He could make no reply. The Colonel gazed at him gravely, and said in a serious tone. "Ah, I understand. You have given the rein to your animosity--you have drawn your sword for the imagined freedom of a nation of madmen, and I cannot blame you for it. I should be forming a very poor opinion of your friendship if I could suppose you capable of imagining that I could betray you. No, my friend; now that I have found you, you are in absolute safety for the first time. From this moment you shall be nobody but the commercial traveller of a German house of business in Marseilles, an old acquaintance of mine. So no more about that." Much as it distressed Edgar, la Combe did not rest until he quitted his hermitage, and shared with him the better quarters provided for him by Don Rafaele.
Edgar hastened to acquaint the suspicious Spaniard with all the circumstances of the case, and his previous relations with la Combe. Don Rafaele restricted himself to the answer, delivered in a grave and dry manner--
"Really; that is a very curious chance indeed!"
The Colonel sympathized keenly with Edgar's position. At the same time he could not divest himself of the characteristic temper of his nation, which sees in liveliness of movement, and the eager pursuit of pleasure, the best means of healing a wounded heart. Thus it happened that the Colonel walked arm in arm with the Marseilles commercial traveller in the Alameda, and drew him into the wild amusements of his light-hearted comrades.
Edgar noticed, clearly enough, that many strange forms dogged him about, watching him with suspicious looks; and it went deeply to his heart when, one day on entering a Posada with the Colonel, he heard distinctly behind him a whisper of "Acqui esta el traïdor!" ("That is the traitor.")
Don Rafaele grew daily more cold and monosyllabic towards Edgar, and at last he saw him no more, and was given to understand by him that, instead of taking his meals with him, he should take them with Colonel la Combe.