"Afterwards?" said Thérence, blushing scarlet for the first time.
"Yes, Thérence the Sincere," returned her father, "speak as becomes a girl who never lies."
"Well, father, then afterwards, I will never leave him, either," she said.
"Go away, all of you!" I cried; "close the curtains; I want to get up and dress and dance and sing. I'm not ill; I have paradise inside of me—" and so saying I fell back in a faint, and saw and knew nothing more, except that I felt, in a kind of a dream, that Thérence was holding me in her arms and giving me remedies.
In the evening I felt better; Joseph was already about, and I might have been, too, only they wouldn't let me; and I was made to spend the evening in bed, while the rest sat and talked in the room, and my Thérence, sitting by my pillow, listened tenderly to what I said, letting me pour out in words all the balm that was in my heart.
The monk talked with Benoît, the pair washing down their conversation with several jorums of white wine, which they swallowed under the guise of a restorative medicine. Huriel and Brulette were together in a corner; Joseph with his mother and the Head-Woodsman in another.
Huriel was saying to Brulette: "I told you, the very first day I saw you, when I showed you your token in my earring, that it should stay there forever unless the ear itself came off. Well, the ear, though slit in the fight, is still there, and the token, though rather bent, is in the ear—see! The wound will heal, the token can be mended, and everything will come all right, by the grace of God."
Mariton was saying to Père Bastien: "What is going to be the result of this fight? Those men are capable of murdering my poor boy if he attempts to play his bagpipe in this region."
"No," replied Père Bastien, "all has happened for the best; they have had a good lesson, and there were witnesses enough outside of the brotherhood to keep them from venturing to attack Joseph or any of us again. They are capable of doing harm when, by force or persuasion, they have brought the candidate to take an oath. But Joseph took none; he will, however, be silent because he is generous. Tiennet will do the same, and so will our young woodsmen by my advice and order. But your bagpipers know very well that if they touch a hair of our heads all tongues will be loosened and the affair brought to justice."
And the monk was saying to Benoît: "I can't laugh as you do about the adventure, for I got into a passion which compels me to confess and do penance. I can forgive them the blows they tried to give me, but not those they forced me to give them. Ah! the prior of my convent is right enough to taunt me with my temper, and tell me I ought to combat not only the old Adam in me but the old peasant too,—that is, the man within me who loves wine and fighting. Wine," continued the monk, sighing, and filling his glass to the brim, "is conquered, thank God! but I discovered this night that my blood is as quarrelsome as ever, and that a mere tap could make me furious."