“I’m laughing, Maître Frantz, because you’ve escaped. If I hadn’t got hold of you, you’d now be paddling in the water like a frog.”
“This is an unpropitious day,” replied Mathéus; “if we continue our journey, I foresee numberless misfortunes!”
“Many besides you have dropped off to sleep and tumbled from their horses,” said Coucou Peter. “Lie down on the moss, take a good nap, and the unpropitious will have passed away by the time you wake. I’ll go and have a bathe. Bruno won’t be sorry for a rest, I’m sure.”
This advice was too much in accord with the good Doctor’s own ideas not to be agreeable to him.
“I approve of this pleasant design,” he said. “Lend me the aid of your shoulder; I am stiff. Take off the horse’s bridle. Go and bathe, my good fellow—go and bathe; a bath will refresh your blood.”
While he was speaking, Frantz Mathéus laid himself down at the foot of an oak, and was truly glad to be able to stretch his limbs in the midst of the heather. The crickets chirped about him. Now and then a wave broke on the pebbles with a sharp slush; he would then open his eyes, and saw Coucou Peter in the act of undressing—of taking off his boots.
The sound of the torrent, the rustle of the leaves, lulled his imagination into vague reverie. Through the tufted branches of the trees he confusedly distinguished the sky, the crests of the mountains. At length his mind reposed; the same sounds fell upon his ears, but their monotony resembled deep silence. The good man distinguished them no longer—his soft and regular breathing announced a profound sleep. Then, perhaps, his mind, freed from its earthly trammels, and going back ages upon ages, wandered, in the form of a hare, through the immense forests of Gaul—perhaps, also, he saw again the humble roof of his sires at Graufthal, and good old Martha weeping for his absence.
CHAPTER IX.
Now the illustrious philosopher had slept for three hours when Coucou Peter cried—“Maître Frantz, wake up!—Here are the pilgrims of Haslach coming down the mountain; they outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore; get up, master, and see them!”