The pastor and his daughter were placed under the special
protection of Captain Falconnet, and the steward had taken care
that they should be well lodged in three rooms that had once been
the abbot's apartments. Their stay had been at first intended to
be short, but the long journey had been so full of suffering to
Isaac, and left such serious effects, that Eustacie could not bear
to undertake it again, and Madame de Quinet soon perceived that she
was safer there than at the chateau, since strangers were seldom
admitted to the fortress, and her presence there attracted no
attention. But for Isaac Gardon's declining health, Eustacie would
have been much happier here than at the chateau; the homely
housewifely life, where all depended on her, suited her; and, using
her lessons in domestic arts of nursing and medicine for the
benefit of her father's flock, she had found, to her dismay, that
the simple people, in their veneration, had made her into a sort of
successor to the patroness of the convent. Isaac had revived
enough for a time to be able to conduct the worship in the church,
and to instruct some his flock; but the teaching of the young had
been more and more transferred to her, and, as he ingenuously said,
had taught her more than she ever knew before. He gradually became
weaker through more suffering, and was absolutely incapable of
removal, when an attack by the Guisards was threatened. Eustacie
might have been sent back to Quinet; but she would not hear of
leaving him; and this first had been a mere slight attack, as if a
mere experiment on the strength of the place. She had, however,
then had to take the lead in controlling the women, and teaching
them to act as nurses, and to carry out provisions; and she must
then have been seen by some one, who reported her presence there to
Narcisse--perhaps by the Italian pedlar. Indeed Humfrey, who came
in for a moment to receive his master's orders, report his watch,
and greet his lady, narrated, on the authority of the lately
enlisted men-at-arms, that M. de Nid de Merle had promised twenty
crowns to any one who might shoot down the heretics' little white
diablesse.
About six weeks had elapsed since the first attack on Pont de
Dronne, and in that time Gardon had sunk rapidly. He died as he
lived, a gentle, patient man, not a characteristic Calvinist,
though his lot had been thrown with that party in his perplexed
life of truth-seeking and disappointment in the aspirations and
hopes of early youth. He had been, however, full of peace and
trust that he should open his eyes where the light was clear, and
no cloud on either side would mar his perception; and his
thankfulness had been great for the blessing that his almost
heaven-sent daughter had been to him in his loneliness,
bereavement, and decay. Much as he loved her, he did not show
himself grieved or distressed on her account; but, as he told her,
he took the summons to leave her as a sign that his task was done,
and the term of her trials ended. 'I trust as fully,' he said,
'that thou wilt soon be in safe and loving hands, as though I could
commit thee to them.' And so he died in her arms, leaving her a far fuller measure of
blessing and of love than ever she had derived from her own father;
and as the enemy's trumpets were already sounding on the hills, she
had feared insult to his remains, and had procured his almost
immediate burial in the cloister, bidding the assistants sing, as
his farewell, that evening psalm which had first brought soothing
to her hunted spirit.