As soon as a certain quantity of the sap of the creeper had fallen upon the wound, the girl had seemed to experience a sensation of great relief; the nervous spasms began to abate; she closed her eyes; and finally she leaned back without attempting to struggle any longer with the persons who held her in their arms.
"You may leave her now," whispered the unknown; "she is asleep."
In fact, the regular though feeble breathing of the patient proved her to be plunged in a profound slumber.
"God be praised!" exclaimed the poor father, clasping his hands in ecstasy; "Then she is really saved?"
"She is," answered the unknown leisurely; "bating unforeseen accidents, she has nothing more to fear."
"But what is the extraordinary remedy you have employed to obtain such a happy result?"
The unknown smiled with disdain, and did not seem willing to reply; however, after a short hesitation, yielding perhaps to that secret vanity which induces us all to make a parade of our wisdom, he decided upon giving the information demanded.
"The pettiest things astonish you fellows who dwell in cities," said he ironically; "the man who has passed his whole life in the wilderness knows many things of which the inhabitants of your brilliant towns are ignorant, although, with the sole aim of humiliating, they take pleasure in parading their false science before us poor savages. Nature hides not the secret of her mysterious harmonics from him who ceaselessly pries into the darkness of night and the brightness of day, with a patience beyond proof, without suffering himself to be discouraged by failure. The sublime Architect, when he had created this immense universe, did not let it fall from his omnipotent hands until it had been made perfect, nor till the amount of good should counterbalance everywhere the amount of evil—placing, so to say, the antidote side by side with the poison."
The stranger listened with increasing surprise to the words of this man, whose real character was an enigma to him, and who at every moment showed himself in lights diametrically opposed, and under forms entirely distinct.
"But," continued the unknown, "pride and presumption make man blind. Accustomed to make all things bear upon himself, imagining that all existence has been specially created for his convenience, he takes no pains to study the secrets of nature further than they seem to have a direct influence on his personal welfare, not caring to make inquiry into her simplest actions. So, for instance, the region in which we now are, being low and marshy, is naturally infested with reptiles, which are so much the more dangerous and to be dreaded, because they are half-calcined and rendered furious by the rays of a torrid sun. Therefore provident nature has produced in abundance throughout these same regions a creeper called mikania—the one I have just used—which is an infallible remedy for the bites of serpents."