Jean had become exceedingly anxious to obtain tidings of Noémi. After the terrible death of her father, the butchering of his followers, the surrender of Domme, and the dispersion of the remainder of his band, he knew not what had become of her. She had relatives at La Roque—the Tardes—that he knew, and he was therefore satisfied that she was not homeless and destitute. But that anything out of the wreck of Le Gros Guillem's accumulations had been preserved for her, he was doubtful. Who Guillem was, whence sprung, of what parents, no one knew. Whether he had any surname no one could say. Like many another Captain of the period he had escaped from the common mass of adventurers by the force of his abilities, by his superior power, by his daring courage. It had been so with that redoubted soldier of fortune, "Le petit Meschin," [10] who from a scullion had risen to be the scourge of whole provinces, and to defeat and well-nigh exterminate a royal army under a prince of the blood. Even renegade priests had headed bands of brigands and distinguished themselves by their outrages of all laws human and divine.
[ [10] "Picciolo servo fuggito, di oscura lugo nato."—Villani.
The "Eglise Guillem" in the rocks of the left bank of the Vézère was no inheritance of the robber chief, but had been taken by him and occupied as a stronghold of his own, and none had dared to reclaim it and attempt to dislodge him, till the attack by the peasants that has been recorded.
Jean felt that a painful obligation lay on him to see Noémi. Her father had met with a terrible death at the hands of his father, who had played with the wretched man as a cat with a mouse before he had cut the cord and precipitated him to his death. Le Gros Guillem had forfeited every right to command sympathy by his treatment of Ogier—in casting him down the oubliette and then by his treacherous attempt to have him murdered by his two men-at-arms. Nevertheless, he was Noémi's father, and his mangled corpse lay between Jean and her, and across that and the terrible wrongs committed by the dead man and the revengeful execution the hands of Jean and Noémi could never meet.
But the word of affiance had been spoken, and spoken solemnly, before many witnesses, and it had been sealed with the giving of a ring. Such a word could not be broken. In popular superstition it bound even beyond the grave. Release could be had only by mutual consent and the restoration of the pledge. Jean rode to La Roque, full of trouble at heart. He loved Noémi, he greatly esteemed her. He saw in her a noble soul struggling to its birth with aspirations after something better than what she had known—gladly would he have taken her to be his, and helped this uncertain, restless, eager spirit to unfold its wings, to break out of its shell, to look up and to soar into a pure atmosphere—but it might not be. The terrible shadow of Le Gros Guillem, the awful story of the past made this impossible.
As he was nearing La Roque, he suddenly drew rein—he saw Noémi. She was seated on a mass of brown fallen leaves, and was plucking helebore flowers. Even that act struck Jean to the heart. "She plays with poison—seeks out the noxious, the deadly," he said. He leaped to the ground, and holding the rein of his horse came to her.
"Noémi, what are you doing?"
"I am making a chaplet for the grave of my father."
"Of helebore?"
"What else suits? Would you have it of the innocent flower of the field? On such he trampled. They call this the wolf's flower—enfin! It is a flower!"