At the same time he mounted on horseback, and the illustrious doctor clambered up behind him with marvellous dexterity.
Coucou Peter at once drew the bar, threw open the door, and dashed out like one riding for his life.
A terrible clamour rose on all sides of them, and Mathéus immediately received three painful cudgel-blows, Coucou-Peter calling out at each blow—
“Ah! ah! another psychological lesson!”
But the illustrious philosopher said nothing; he closed his eyes and clung to his disciple so tightly that the fiddler could hardly breathe.
Dame Catherina, standing on her doorstep, her eggs in a basin, uttered plaintive cries as she watched these proceedings, despairing of her dear doctor’s safety. But when she saw his horse going off at full gallop through the midst of the hooting and yelling crowd, the good woman pressed her hand upon her tender heart, dried her eyes with the border of her apron, and returned to the kitchen heaving a deep sigh.
“Poor, dear man!” she murmured; “may Heaven conduct him!”
CHAPTER VIII.
After galloping for a full half-hour, Frantz Mathéus, hearing nothing but the beating of his horse’s hoofs on the road, and the song of the birds in the free air, ventured to open first one eye, then the other; and seeing himself in the midst of a thick forest, far from the cudgels and sophistical minds of the worthy country-folks, breathed like one who has been cut down after having been hanged.