"For your sake, I hope you may have that luck. In the meantime, I will do anything in my power for you."
"I wish first for a bed-chamber."
"We have near here a grotto, which is called Les Etables. You would not like it; the sheep were kept there during the winter, and the odor still remains. I will get two tents from the shepherds below and you can camp here—until the arrival—of the gendarmes!"
"I wish for a waiting-maid."
"Nothing is easier. Our men will go down to the plain, and stop the first peasant-woman who passes,—if, however, the gendarmerie will permit!"
"I must have clothes, dresses, linen, toilet appurtenances, soap, a mirror, combs, scents, a tapestry frame, a——"
"A good many things, Madame, and in order to get them all, we would be forced to go to Athens. But one will do the best. Count on me and count not too much on your soldiers."
"May God pity us!" Mary-Ann said.
A vigorous echo replied: "Kyrie Eleison!" (Lord, have mercy upon us.) It was the good old man who came to visit us, and who sang while traveling about in order to keep in practice. He saluted us cordially, placed upon the grass a vessel full of honey, and seated himself near us. "Take and eat," he said. "My bees offer you a dessert."
I shook hands with him; Mrs. Simons and Mary-Ann turned away in disgust. They obstinately refused to see him in any other light than as an accomplice of the brigands. The poor, good man knew no malice. He knew only how to chant his prayers, to care for his bees, to sell his goods, to collect the revenues of the convent, and to live at peace with the whole world. His intelligence was limited; his science, nothing; his conduct as innocent as that of a well-regulated machine. I do not believe that he was able to clearly distinguish good from bad, and to see any difference between a thief and an honest man. His wisdom consisted in making four meals a day, and of never getting more than half-seas over. He was, moreover, one of the best monks of his order.