“You are,” said the Stranger, “in a house whose owner, Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who occupies the first floor, is celebrated throughout the section for his patriotism; but he is secretly attached to the Bourbons. He used to be a huntsman of Monseigneur the Prince of Conti, and to him he owes his fortune. If you do not go out of his house, you are in greater safety here than in any place else in France. Stay here. Devout hearts will attend to your necessities, and you may await without danger less evil times. A year hence, on the twenty-first of January”—(in uttering these words he could not conceal an involuntary movement)—“if you continue to adopt this dismal place of asylum, I will return to celebrate with you the expiatory mass.”
He said no more. He bowed to the silent occupants of the attic, cast a last glance upon the evidences which testified of their indigence, and went away.
To the two innocent nuns, such an adventure had all the interest of a romance; and so, as soon as the venerable abbé informed them of the mysterious gift so solemnly bestowed upon him by that man, the box was placed upon the table and the three faces, unquiet, dimly lighted by the candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box, and found therein a handkerchief of very fine linen, drenched with perspiration; and, on unfolding it, they recognized stains.
“It is blood!” said the priest.
“It is marked with the royal crown!” cried the other nun.
The two sisters dropped the precious relic with horror. To those two naïve souls the mystery in which the Stranger was enveloped became altogether inexplicable; and as for the priest, from that day he did not even seek an explanation.
The three prisoners were not slow in perceiving that in spite of the Terror a powerful arm was stretched over them.
In the first place, they received some wood and some provisions; then the two nuns realized that a woman must be associated with their protector, when some one sent them linen and clothing which enabled them to go out without being remarked on account of the aristocratic fashion of the garments which they had been forced to retain; and lastly, Mucius Scaevola gave them two cards of citizenship. Often, advice necessary to the priest’s safety reached him by devious ways; and he found this advice so opportune that it could have been given only by one initiated in secrets of state.
Despite the famine which prevailed in Paris, the outcasts found at the door of their lodging rations of white bread which were regularly brought there by invisible hands; nevertheless, they believed that they could recognize in Mucius Scaevola the mysterious agent of that benefaction, which was always as ingenious as it was discerning. The noble occupants of the attic could not doubt that their protector was the person who had come to ask the priest to celebrate the expiatory mass on the night of the twenty-second of January, 1793; so that he became the object of a peculiar cult of worship to those three beings, who had no hope except in him, and lived only through him. They had added special prayers for him to their devotions; night and morning those pious hearts lifted their voices for his happiness, for his prosperity, for his health, and supplicated God to deliver him from all snares, to deliver him from his enemies, and to accord him a long and peaceable life. Their gratitude, renewed every day, so to speak, was necessarily accompanied by a sentiment of curiosity which became more lively from day to day. The circumstances which had accompanied the appearance of the Stranger were the subject of their conversations; they formed a thousand conjectures regarding him, and the diversion afforded them by their thoughts of him was a benefaction of a new kind. They promised themselves not to allow the Stranger to evade their friendship on the evening when he should return, according to his promise, to commemorate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI.
That night, so impatiently awaited, came at last. At midnight the sound of the Stranger’s heavy steps was heard on the old wooden staircase; the room had been arrayed to receive him, the altar was dressed. This time the sisters opened the door beforehand and both pressed forward to light the stairway. Mademoiselle de Langeais even went down a few steps in order to see her benefactor the sooner.