'And this is has spared,' said Berenger, taking out the string of
little yellow shells. 'Dost know them, sweet heart? They have
been my chaplet all this time.' 'Ah!' cried Eustacie, 'poor, good Mademoiselle Noemi! she threaded
them for my child, when she was very little. Ah! could she have
given them to you--could it then not have been true--that horror?' 'Alas! it was too true. I found these shells in the empty cradle,
in the burnt house, and deemed them all I should ever have of my
babe.' 'Poor Noemi! poor Noemi! She always longed to be a martyr; but we
fled from her, and the fate we had brought on her. That was the
thought that preyed on my dear father. He grieved so to have left
his sheep--and it was only for my sake. Ah! I have brought evil on
all who have been good to me, beginning with you. You had better
cast me off, or I shall bring yet worse!' 'Let it be so, if we are only together.' He drew her to him and she laid her head on his shoulder,
murmuring, 'Ah! father, father, were you but here to see it. So
desolate yesterday, so ineffably blest today. Oh! I cannot even
grieve for him now, save that he could not just have seen us; yet I
think he knew it would be so.' 'Nay, it may be that he does see us,' said Berenger. 'Would that I
had known who it was whom you were laying down "en paix et seurte
bonne!" As it was, the psalm brought precious thoughts of Chateau
Leurre, and the little wife who was wont to sing it with me.' 'Ah!' said Eustacie, 'it was when he sang those words as he was
about to sleep in the ruin of the Temple that first I-- cowering
there in terror--knew him for no Templar's ghost, but for a friend.
That story ended my worst desolation. That night he became my
father; the next my child came to me!' 'My precious treasure! Ah! what you must have undergone, and I all
unknowing, capable of nothing wiser than going out of my senses,
and raging in a fever because I could convince no one that those
were all lies about your being aught but my true and loving wife.
But tell me, what brought thee hither to be the tutelary patron,
where, but for the siege, I had over-passed thee on the way to
Quinet?' Then Eustacie told him how the Italian pedlar had stolen her
letters, and attempted to poison her child--the pedlar whom he soon
identified with that wizard who had talked to him of 'Esperance,'
until the cue had evidently been given by the Chevalier. Soon
after the Duke had dispatched a messenger to say that the Chevalier
de Ribaumont was on the way to demand his niece; and as it was a
period of peace, and the law was decidedly on his side, Madame de
Quinet would be unable to offer any resistance. She therefore had
resolved to send Eustacie away--not to any of the seaports whither
the uncle would be likely to trace her, but absolutely to a place
which he would have passed through on his journey into Guyenne.
The monastery of Notre-Dame de l'Esperance at Pont de Dronne had
been placed there, as well as a colony of silk-spinners, attracted
by the mulberry-trees of the old abbey garden. These, however,
having conceived some terror of the ghosts of the murdered monks,
had entreated for a pastor to protect them; and Madame la Duchesse
thought that in this capacity Isaac Gardon, known by one of the
many aliases to which the Calvinist ministers constantly resorted,
might avoid suspicion for the present. She took the persecuted
fugitives for some stages in an opposite direction, in her own
coach, then returned to face and baffle the Chevalier, while her
trusty steward, by a long detour, conducted them to Pont de
Dronne, which they reached the very night after to Chevalier had
returned through it to Nid de Merle.