"Hide! hide yourself!" she cried. "Though we go out so seldom, our errands are known, our steps are watched--"
"What has happened?" asked another old woman sitting near the fire.
"The man who has hung about the house since yesterday followed me to-night."
At these words the occupants of the hovel looked at each other with terror in their faces. The old man was the least moved of the three, possibly because he was the one in greatest danger. Under the pressure of misfortune or the yoke of persecution a man of courage begins, as it were, by preparing for the sacrifice of himself: he looks upon his days as so many victories won from fate. The eyes of the two women, fixed upon the old man, showed plainly that he alone was the object of their extreme anxiety.
"Why distrust God, my sisters?" he said, in a hollow but impressive voice. "We chanted praises to his name amid the cries of victims and assassins at the convent. If it pleased him to save me from that butchery, it was doubtless for some destiny which I shall accept without a murmur. God protects his own, and disposes of them according to his will. It is of you, not of me, that we should think."
"No," said one of the women: "what is our life in comparison with that of a priest?"
"Ever since the day when I found myself outside of the Abbaye des Chelles," said the nun beside the fire, "I have given myself up for dead."
"Here," said the one who had just come in, holding out the little box to the priest, "here are the sacramental wafers--Listen!" she cried, interrupting herself. "I hear some one on the stairs."
At these words all three listened intently. The noise ceased.
"Do not be frightened," said the priest, "even if some one asks to enter. A person on whose fidelity we can safely rely has taken measures to cross the frontier, and he will soon call here for letters which I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de Beauséant, advising them as to the measures they must take to get you out of this dreadful country, and save you from the misery or the death you would otherwise undergo here."