aimed the wife: "ah heavens! your honour, we now come in
earnest to the foul spot. No, Monsieur Vila, religion, or what people
so call christianity, he is utterly deficient in."

"How then has he thus fallen into error?" asked the old man.

"The Lord knows best," answered she, "who has created him so confused.
He will ruin himself yet with his curing. Look you, it is not alone his
companions of the faith, the Catholic Christians that he succours
without remuneration, if they only give him the least hint of poverty;
nay also--God be with us--the Huguenots and even the Camisards he
attends, as one of us, if he can find an opportunity. The wounded whom
they ought to have taken off to Florac swarmed here; look you, the
God-forgetting man quartered, healed and fed them and occupied himself
so much with them, that they were able afterwards to run off in health,
and I will not answer for it, that he did not also give them money and
the worth of money to take with them on the road. No, not a spark of
true genuine faith and of proper christianity is in the man."

"He is probably a sort of Samaritan," said Vila affected.

"You are right, good sir," continued Barbara, "Samariter, or Samoid,
and if he only does not turn out an anibaptist in his old days. Would
you believe it, six weeks ago, when they gave up so many of those poor
sinners to justice at Florac, thither did he run the first, and bound
up the wounds of the sick and set their broken limbs. Husband, said I,
they will certainly be put to the wheel, and hanged, there is nothing
more to heal in them. Then said the simple fellow, God or nature had
taken so much pains to suffer their joints, bones, muscles, and I know
not what else to grow, that one is obliged out of charity to spare and
take care of them as long as they will last. Look you, he has such
enthusiasm stuff in his head that, as the saying is, he is Jack in
every corner, where there is only any thing to doctor, should it even
be the greatest criminal, there he is."

"I shall read him a sermon on that point," said Vila.

"That's right!" cried she joyfully, "scold him a skin full, for he
always says, that I am too stupid; and my persuasions tend to nothing."
The woman had got up several times to look at the little bed.
"Perhaps, you have a sick child there?" asked the doctor.--"Child!"
answered she somewhat mockingly! "quite otherwise! only look at the
present!"--when she removed the cushion, there lay a cur do