He was hurrying off, but Dorot kept him back. "No hurry," said he; "never reckon too surely on what a ship brings home. Pick people out, and they're just those that are missing when the roll's called. Better wait till the Lieutenant brings his own news."
—"You're right," replied the quarter-master; "the more so since the frigate comes, if I don't mistake, from the Havannah."
—"Who knows whether she won't bring you some lodgers for your lazaretto?"
—"So be it; they'll be welcome. With Geneviève and the children, one can't be dull; but once in a while there's no harm in a little company. You fellows at the Ile des Morts, you have the artillery despatch-carrier, who keeps you up to all that goes on, to say nothing of inspections and your convoys of powder; whilst here—never a thing! Not one visitor in a twelvemonth! At least, if you have to put people sometimes into quarantine, you hear what's done on land there, and that leaves you some thing to talk about for months."
The artillery-man shrugged his shoulders—"That's all very well, when they don't bring disease with them; but the old coasters still talk of a quarantine in which the lazaretto ran short of both earth and rock for burying the dead, and when the bodies were of necessity thrown into the sea with a shot attached to their necks, as in vessels out on a voyage."
—"Now may Christ spare us such a trial!" exclaimed Ropars, respectfully touching his hat, as he was used to do whenever he pronounced the Saviour's name. "But you're speaking of a long time ago, Dorot; please Heaven, we won't see such again. There are no heathen here now; and I believe that God's good will will take care of us."
Dorot nodded his acquiescence. In fact this confidence, springing from a simple faith, had up to that time been justified by experience. During the thirteen years that the keeper had spent at Trébéron, he had only received healthy persons into quarantine, who were complying with a formal regulation, and were obliged to make proof of their good health by undergoing this preventive sequestration. There were indeed rare exceptions. Like all lazarettos, that of Trébéron remained generally unoccupied; and the keeper kept watch there alone, like an ever-living sentinel posted in advance of the continent, for the purpose of warding off contagion.
As they chatted, Dorot and he had reached the house. Geneviève was waiting for them at the doorway, surrounded by the three children who laid hold of and talked to her all at once. After an exchange of their accustomed friendly greetings, she went in, with the two keepers, whilst Michael drew off Francine and Josèphe towards Brunette, who was waiting for them on a pinnacle of rock, eyeing them and bleating at them. The youngster, accustomed to chase his father's sheep upon the declivities of the Ile des Morts, endeavored to get at her; but the capricious creature sprung from point to point along the precipices, letting herself at every moment almost be caught, and at every moment bounding away from the hand that just could touch her.
Whilst the children kept up this chase, with a thousand calls to one another and a thousand peals of laughter, Ropars and Dorot entered the eating-room in which Geneviève was already laying the cloth. It was a room of middling size, furnished by the keeper himself at the period of his marriage, and ornamented with a few marine engravings. Amongst these was particularly distinguished a portrait of Jean Bart, that nautical Hercules on whom, as all the world knows, his traditional celebrity has fastened all manner of superhuman exploits and impossible adventures.
Having made his guest sit down, Mathieu went off to disinter his bottle of Rousillon wine; and brought it back all whitened with the sand, and capped with a green-waxed cork that bespoke its noble birth-place. Dorot good-temperedly complained of such extravagance, and hinted that he could not make his visit a long one, inasmuch as the officer commanding the post of the Ile des Morts had charged him to bring the skiff back before sunset. Geneviève therefore hurried herself to serve up the dinner, and called the children to take their places at table.