"Then farewell! I shall start immediately."
"Without taking a moment's rest?"
"You know that I never feel fatigue. Come, courage! We shall meet again at La Magdalena."
The two friends embraced, and then quitted the jacal. On the threshold they separated, after a last pressure of the hand, Valentine going to the right, the count to the left.
A guard of ten men defended the approaches to headquarters, and a sentinel was pacing, with shouldered musket, before the door of the mission church, the count's temporary residence. On arriving at his house Don Louis saw Don Cornelio, accompanied by two persons, one of whom wore a clerical garb. They had stopped, and were apparently waiting. The count hurried on. Although he had never, till this moment, seen Father Seraphin, he recognised him by the portraits Valentine had drawn.
He was still the man with the angelic glance, the delicate and marked features, the intelligently gentle countenance, whom we have presented to our readers in another work; but the apostolate is severe in America. Years count there as triple for missionaries really worthy of the title; and Father Seraphin, though hardly thirty years of age, already bore on his body and face traces of that precocious decrepitude to which those men fall victims who sacrifice themselves, without any thought of self, to the welfare of humanity. His back was beginning to bend, his hair was turning white on his temples, and two deep wrinkles furrowed his brow. Still the vivacity of his glance seemed to contradict this apparent weakness, and prove that if his body had grown enfeebled in the contest, the soul had ever remained equally young and powerful.
The three men bowed politely. The count and the missionary, after exchanging an earnest glance, shook hands with a smile. They had understood each other.
"You are welcome, sir," the count said, addressing the general, "although I am surprised that you place such confidence in pirates, as you call us, as to confide yourself so entirely to our honour."
"The law of nations, sir," the general replied, "has certain recognised rules which are respected by all men."
"Excepting by those who are placed without the pale of society and the common law of humanity," Don Louis remarked dryly.