“Your daughter counsels well.—We must part in disguise, and that instantly. We may, I trust, rely upon you for the necessary secrecy, and for the means of escape?”
“With all my heart—with all my heart,” said the honest citizen, who, not much satisfied with the dignity of his own conduct, was eager to find some mode of atonement. “I cannot but remember that I owed you my life last night, both for unclasping that accursed steel doublet, and helping me through the other scrape, which was worse, for yonder Boar and his brood look more like devils than men. So I will be true to you as blade to haft, as our cutlers say, who are the best in the whole world. Nay, now you are ready, come this way—you shall see how far I can trust you.”
The Syndic led him from the chamber in which he had slept to his own counting room, in which he transacted his affairs of business, and after bolting the door, and casting a piercing and careful eye around him, he opened a concealed and vaulted closet behind the tapestry, in which stood more than one iron chest. He proceeded to open one which was full of guilders, and placed it at Quentin's discretion to take whatever sum he might think necessary for his companion's expenses and his own.
As the money with which Quentin was furnished on leaving Plessis was now nearly expended, he hesitated not to accept the sum of two hundred guilders, and by doing so took a great weight from the mind of Pavillon, who considered the desperate transaction in which he thus voluntarily became the creditor as an atonement for the breach of hospitality which various considerations in a great measure compelled him to commit.
Having carefully locked his treasure chamber, the wealthy Fleming next conveyed his guest to the parlour, where, in full possession of her activity of mind and body, though pale from the scenes of the preceding night, he found the Countess attired in the fashion of a Flemish maiden of the middling class. No other was present excepting Trudchen, who was sedulously employed in completing the Countess's dress, and instructing her how to bear herself. She extended her hand to him, which, when he had reverently kissed, she said to him, “Seignior Quentin, we must leave our friends here unless I would bring on them a part of the misery which has pursued me ever since my father's death. You must change your dress and go with me, unless you also are tired of befriending a being so unfortunate.”
“I!—I tired of being your attendant!—To the end of the earth will I guard you! But you—you yourself—are you equal to the task you undertake!—Can you, after the terrors of last night”
“Do not recall them to my memory,” answered the Countess, “I remember but the confusion of a horrid dream.—Has the excellent Bishop escaped?”
“I trust he is in freedom,” said Quentin, making a sign to Pavillon, who seemed about to enter on the dreadful narrative, to be silent.
“Is it possible for us to rejoin him?—Hath he gathered any power?” said the lady.
“His only hopes are in Heaven,” said the Scot, “but wherever you wish to go, I stand by your side, a determined guide and guard.”