"Only that your brother has escaped," said his lord.
"Thank God!" said the young man, with a smile. "Pray, do not pursue him, my lord."
"I will not," replied Montagu: "make your mind easy, Ned."
"Here come some people with a litter up the hill," said one of the blacksmiths.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The auberge, the cabaret, the gîte, were the usual places of repose for travellers in the reign of Louis XIII., as they had been under that of his father, Henry IV. Some change, indeed, had taken place in point of comfort and refinement; and even before the epoch of Louis XIV., which was now rapidly approaching, many an auberge was a very comfortable and luxurious dwelling. But there was another roof, which, in those days, afforded in Catholic countries—and even now afford, on the less frequented lines of travel—a more peaceful and little less comfortable or luxurious resting-spot than the houses of public entertainment. This was the large monastery, the abbey or the priory of any of the hospitable orders; and in Savoy these were peculiarly numerous, as their splendid ruins still attest.
Alas that in the march of what we call improvement so much that is good is swept away! Many undoubtedly were the vices and the evils which had crept into the Romish Church; great, we Protestants believe, was the corruption of her faith; but the time will come when the whole world will own that to that Church we owe a debt of gratitude for arts, institutions, faith itself, preserved, and will regret that in the fanatical zeal of religious innovation the good and the bad were promiscuously crushed together.
With the men who bore the litter sent by the Abbé Scaglia was a surgeon of some eminence, who strongly advised that the wounded youth should be carried to the Abbey of St. Pierre rather than to a noisy inn in Aix. It was but a mile from the city, he said: the air was pure and fine, and the attendance of the sisters, who were of an order of charity, would be worth more than that of any nurses who could be found in the town. They were the servants of God; the others were the servants of Mammon: and no one could doubt which would do their duty best.