"And Martin! the boy, of whom you spoke, who so valiantly saved my son's life?" inquired the Lord of Beauvais.
"Martin;" cried the doctor aloud: "where then do you hide yourself? yes, that's true indeed, you are both indebted to the stripling. He wore, when he entered, a thick handkerchief round his head, it may have been from a blow that reached him; after he had rescued your son, he received a right deep cut in the head again from a sabre, so that a stream of blood gushed out. As if for a change, he wiped his nose and without ceremony bound a second turban over the first, though he turned ghastly pale from it.--Martin! Where then is the rascal!" But there was no one to answer his call. "Thus is it with foolish youth," said the doctor vexedly: "he has misunderstood me about taking back the horse, and in his simplicity returned immediately. Poor youth! I trust no fever may be added to it."
"It would make me miserable," said the Counsellor, "if I should not be able to testify my thanks to the dear boy. If I were persuaded that he was suffering, ill, helpless, or dying, I should weep tears of blood."
"It will not turn out so bad as that," muttered Vila chagrined: "Why should the oaf run off thus, as if----Aye! Aye! at least I would have bound up his wounds for him. But now, the devil will not catch him directly. Such Camisard webs are usually formed of very tough materials."
"They were compelled to proceed again, in order to reach with safety the solitary village in the mountain heights." "You must know," said the doctor, when they were again seated in the coach, "that it is merely to an old maidservant of mine I am now conducting you, a simple person, who served me long, but who is, however, so faithful and honest, that it is almost a scandal, what perhaps many free thinking exquisites would say of her. She has married a gardener, or peasant, who also plays the surgeon in the mountains. There you will pass for an old invalid cousin, whose house and farm the Camisards have set fire to; you will find your daughter there already, the intelligent child however must not betray you; the husband and wife would suffer themselves to be torn to pieces rather than give out any thing else of you. If you will but sit half an hour in the room with Barbara, she herself will take you for her cousin, and there will be no further necessity for lying. That is why such things often succeed better in this class than in a higher one: education they have none, but they possess the proper capacity for belief. Only lose not courage yourself, and in that solitude there do not become a timid hare's foot. All may yet be well." With these and similar conversations they, at length, arrived in the afternoon at the village in the centre of the mountains. The houses lay dispersed midway, or above the declivity of the mountain; each had a garden and shrubbery attached to it, and the church situated on the highest point, looked down on the lowly cottages. The little dwellings after which the travellers were obliged to inquire, stood at the extremity of the village, immediately over a rapidly flowing brook, a kitchen-garden was in front and a few chesnut, ash, and plantain-trees spread a shade and freshness around. When the travellers alighted, the rather elderly hostess advanced to the little vestibule to meet them. "Welcome! right welcome!" said she half jestingly, but with the heartiest good will: "So the old gentleman is my cousin? I rejoice in the acquisition of his relationship." "Where is my daughter?" asked the Lord of Beauvais.
"Hush! hush!" said Barbara with a significant look; "my little cousin sleeps in the room above--which you too will now inhabit, my much honoured cousin."
"That's all right," said the doctor: "only study nicely your expressions; and what is sick Joseph doing?"
"Ah, heaven!" said the old woman, he did not get over his fright, "the poor man has died at the next village below there, for when he was obliged to make off so quickly, helter skelter with my little cousin, and had lost his master, who had taken another road, and that the police officers became so troublesome, and the militia would also interfere, then all that affected his liver and spleen, and he died of it.
"Poor Joseph!" sighed the Counsellor.
"But pray, make yourselves comfortable," pursued the old hostess,--"sit down then cousin, poor man, there on that soft chair; you must now forget, that you were formerly accustomed to anything better."