"What is it?" asked Lucette, taking what the man offered, but not comprehending what it was.
"A peau de bique, to-be-sure," replied the boatman. "You are the girl that Georgy Brin told me of, are not you? I must not let you get wet; for he says you are weakly. 'Tis a bad business, anyhow!" And, with this sage reflection, he began vigorously to handle his oars.
Edward aided his fair companion to envelop herself in the water-proof garment then and still common in that part of France; and the boat shot on rapidly under the branches of the trees, which may be said to have interlaced above them. For about a quarter of a mile all was darkness, but at the end of that distance the boatman began to look up toward the sky wherever a small patch of the heavens could be seen through the overhanging trees. Edward, too, saw from time to time gleams of red light upon the water; and it seemed as if the sky itself had caught fire from the lightning and would soon be in one general blaze. Another quarter of a mile brought the travellers to a spot where were two reed cabins and an open space of ground round them; and there the boatman lay upon his oars. All eyes were now turned toward the abbey, where a sight at once sad and grand presented itself. The top of the great square tower, like an immense altar, bore a pyramid of flame up to the skies; and from every window and loop-hole issued forth a tongue of fire, licking the gray walls. The windows even of the church were painted in red upon the dark stone-work, whenever the cloud of smoke which surrounded the whole of the lower part of the building like a vast shroud suffered the masonry to appear.
"Alas for the poor monks!" said the boatman, with an unaffected sigh: "if they did not do much good, they did not do any harm; and we might have had worse people amongst us. That abbey has stood wellnigh four hundred years, they tell me; and it was never touched by lightning until now,—doubtless because they have given it to a lay abbot, and he turns all the revenues to the works of man which were devoted to the works of God. Well, we cannot help the poor souls." And, without further thought of the burning edifice, he plied his oars again, and the boat cut her way smoothly through the glassy waters, leaving long, fiery ripples behind her.
Two miles more of hard rowing brought the party to a small farm, where two or three of the same huts of mud, bushes, and reeds appeared close together on the bank; and the rower paused before the largest of the humble edifices, calling, in a loud voice, to persons who might not be without ear-shot but who were certainly not within sight, to inform them that he would not be home till daybreak. "The rain is falling," he said, as if speaking to himself, "but the whole abbey will be down: that is clear."
He then rowed on, pursuing for some three hundred yards the larger canal; but at the end of that distance he turned into a very narrow and sinuous channel, where he laid down his oars and propelled the boat solely with the pole. The labor seemed hard, and the progress slow, and Edward took the occasion to ask quietly whither they were going.
"To La Caponnière, to-be-sure," replied the man. "Did you not know that?"
"No," replied the youth: "Monsieur Brin merely told me that he would procure me a boat at two o'clock to carry us to a place of safety."
"Well, here is the boat," answered the man, "and La Caponnière is a place of safety. There are no better people in the world than old Madame Brin and her sons and daughters. They are cousins of his, you know, and by this time they are ready to receive you. She was his cousin before her marriage, you know, and then she married his first-cousin, who left Niort in the time of the troubles; and so they are doubly cousins, you know."