Pepé, anxious to repair as far as possible the involuntary injury that he had caused to the Mediana family, walked along with an elastic step. Fabian alone did not seem happy, and after a quarter of an hour he stopped, saying that he needed rest. All three sat down on a little hillock, and Pepé, pointing to the mountains, cried, in a tone of gay reproach, “What! Don Fabian! does not the neighbourhood of those places, so fertile in gold, give new vigour to your limbs?”
“No,” replied Fabian, “for I shall not go a step further in that direction till sunrise.”
“Ah!” said Bois-Rose, “and why not?”
“Why? Because this is a cursed place—a place where he—whom before you I loved as a father—was assassinated; because a thousand dangers surround you, and I have already exposed you too much by making you espouse my cause.”
“What are these dangers that we three together cannot brave? Can they be greater than what we have just passed through? And if it please Pepé and I to incur them for you, what then?”
“These dangers are of all kinds,” replied Fabian, “why deceive oneself longer? Does not everything prove that Don Estevan knows also of the existence of the Golden Valley?”
“Well, and what do you conclude from that?”
“That three men cannot prevail against sixty.”
“Listen, my child,” replied Bois-Rose with some impatience, “it was before engaging in this enterprise that we should have made these reflections; now they are too late, and why do you not think to-day as you did yesterday?”
“Because yesterday I was blinded by passion; because affection has now taken its place; because I do not hope to-day what I hoped yesterday.”