“There is one who can walk, and is following behind me with Justin; the other was wounded against the rocks, and they are carrying him on a litter made of branches.”
“I will run and have him placed in the room below,” said the bailiff, as he went out. “Catherine, you can look to the young ladies.”
“And the shipwrecked man who can walk—where is he?” asked the bailiff’s wife.
“Here he is,” said the peasant, pointing to some one who came rapidly along the gallery; “when he heard that the two young ladies were safe in the chateau—though he is old, and wounded in the head, he took such great strides, that it was all I could do to get here before him.”
Hardly had the peasant pronounced these words, when Rose and Blanche, springing up by a common impulse, flew to the door. They arrived there at the same moment as Dagobert.
The soldier, unable to utter a syllable, fell on his knees at the threshold, and extended his arms to the daughters of General Simon; while Spoil-sport, running to them licked their hands.
But the emotion was too much for Dagobert; and, when he had clasped the orphans in his arms, his head fell backward, and he would have sunk down altogether, but for the care of the peasants. In spite of the observations of the bailiff’s wife, on their state of weakness and agitation, the two young girls insisted on accompanying Dagobert, who was carried fainting into an adjoining apartment.
At sight of the soldier, Rodin’s face was again violently contracted, for he had till then believed that the guide of General Simon’s daughters was dead. The missionary, worn out with fatigue, was leaning upon a chair, and had not yet perceived Rodin.
A new personage, a man with a dead yellow complexion, now entered the room, accompanied by another peasant, who pointed out Gabriel to him. This man, who had just borrowed a smock-frock and a pair of trousers, approached the missionary, and said to him in French but with a foreign accent: “Prince Djalma has just been brought in here. His first word was to ask for you.”
“What does that man say?” cried Rodin, in a voice of thunder; for, at the name of Djalma, he had sprung with one bound to Gabriel’s side.