In these wanderings Ferdinand lost some of his ardor for proselytising. He had traveled across mountains and valleys by day and by night, carrying temptation with him; Baïla had really become to him the demon which he had fancied her.
With the beautiful Mingrelian, his liberator, and the companion of his flight, walking at the same pace, in the same pathway, sleeping under the same shelter, cared for and watched over by her, it had been difficult for him to prevent his heart from beating under other inspirations than those of divine love. Ferdinand was twenty-five years old, and gratitude has great sway over a generous soul.
Still in the first days of their common flight he had converted his schismatic companion, who, from her indifference to matters of religion, was easy to persuade; but it was said that in her turn she had soon converted him. What is positively known about it is, that the young man did not return to France alone, but that when his passport was exhibited at Marseilles, it provided for M. Ferdinand Laperre, consular cadet, traveling with his sister.
My friend, the illustrious traveler, had already furnished me with all the details of the history I have recounted; but my curiosity was not yet fully satisfied. I wished to know the fate of the lovers after their arrival in France. I pressed him with questions on this point, and at first uselessly. We were breakfasting in the open air, on the lawn at the Butard, and my botanist, in an exultation difficult to describe, was fully occupied with a godsend he had found beneath the table we had used. It was a small plant with shaggy and lanceolate leaves, with flowers of pale yellow, marked with a violet spot at the base of their five petals.
“Cistus guttatus! Helianthemum guttatum!” he exclaimed, with cries and gestures impossible to describe to any one who has not the heart of a botanist. “I thought it only existed in the mountains of Anti-Taurus, from whence I brought away so carefully an unique specimen. It was my finest vegetable conquest, and lo I find it here at the Butard at Luciennes, a suburb of Paris, beneath the table of a tavern. How can this be? Taurus and the Butard rivals in their productions? I am nonplussed! Do you believe in Asia Minor?”
“But of Asia Minor?” said I, interrupting him with tenacity, with obstinacy; “you have related to me a story, the parties to which interest me strongly—I beseech you tell me more of them!”
“They are perfectly well, I thank you,” he replied.
“I do not inquire after their health, but their fate.”
“Ah! what has become of them? Yes, I comprehend;” then looking at me with an air of mockery, and laughing loudly, he continued, “as they have, like us, a habit of chatting much when eating, they breakfast near by.”
“How! What!” I exclaimed, “those people at the fountain of the priest?”