“Bah!” said another; “he doesn’t do harm to everybody. He never hurts children; and, besides, we have only to pass by very quietly without saying anything to him. What do you suppose he’ll do to us?”
“Oh, it would be all right if we were alone,” answered the first; “but M. Bernard is here; we’re sure to have a spell cast on us.”
“What do you say, you fool?” I cried, doubling my fist.
“It’s not my fault, my lord,” replied the boy. “That old wretch doesn’t like the gentry, and he has said he would be glad to see M. Tristan and all his sons hanging from the same bough.”
“He said that, did he? Good!” I answered. “Come on, and you shall see. All who are my friends will follow; any one that leaves me is a coward.”
Two of my companions, out of vanity, let themselves be drawn on. The others pretended to imitate them; but, after a few steps, they had all taken flight and disappeared into the copse. However, I went on proudly, escorted by my two acolytes. Little Sylvain, who was in front, took off his hat as soon as he saw Patience in the distance; and when we arrived opposite him, though the man was looking on the ground without appearing to notice us, he was seized with terror, and said, in a trembling voice:
“Good evening, Master Patience; a good night’s rest to you.”
The sorcerer, roused out of his reverie, started like a man waked from sleep; and I saw, not without a certain emotion, his weather-beaten face half covered with a thick gray beard. His big head was quite bald, and the bareness of his forehead only served to make his bushy eyebrows more prominent. Behind these his round deepset eyes seemed to flash like lightning at the end of summer behind the fading foliage. He was of small stature, but very broad-shouldered; in fact, built like a gladiator. The rags in which he was clad were defiantly filthy. His face was short and of a vulgar type, like that of Socrates; and if the fire of genius glowed in his strongly marked features, I certainly could not perceive it. He appeared to me a wild beast, an unclean animal. Filled with a sense of loathing, and determined to avenge the insult he had offered to my name, I put a stone in my sling, and without further ado hurled it at him with all my might.
At the moment the stone flew out, Patience was in the act of replying to the boy’s greeting.
“Good evening, lads; God be with you!” he was saying when the stone whistled past his ear and struck a tame owl of which Patience had made a pet, and which at the approach of night was beginning to rouse itself in the ivy above the door.