for there is no other
choice.'

'Nay, Nanon,' said M. Gardon, 'wherefore should she part with the charge
that God has laid on her?'

Eustacie gave a little cry of grateful joy. 'Oh, sir, come nearer! Do
you, indeed, say that they have no right to tear her from me?'

'Surely not, Lady. It is you whose duty it is to shield and guard her.'

'Oh, sir, tell me again! Yours is the right religion. Oh, you are the
minister for me! If you will tell me I ought to keep my child, then I
will believe everything else. I will do just as you tell me.' And she
stretched out both hands to him, with vehement eagerness.

'Poor thing! This is no matter of one religion or another,' said the
minister; 'it is rather the duty that the Almighty hath imposed, and
that He hath made an eternal joy.'

'Truly,' said Nanon, ashamed at having taken the other side: 'the good
_pasteur_ says what is according to nature. It would have gone hard with
me if any one had wished to part me from Robin or Sara; but these fine
ladies, and, for that matter, BOURGEOISES too, always do put out their
babes; and it seemed to me that Madame would find it hard to contrive
for herself--let alone the little one.'

'Ah! but what would be the use of contriving for myself, without her?'
said Eustacie.

If all had gone well and prosperously with Madame de Ribaumont, probably
she would have surrendered an infant born in purple and in pall to the
ordinary lot of its contemporaries; but the exertions and suffering
she had undergone on behalf of her child, its orphanhood, her own
loneliness, and even the general disappointment in its sex, had given it
a hold on her vehement, determined heart, that intensified to the utmost
the instincts of motherhood; and she listened as if to an angle's voice
as Maitre Gardon replied to Nanon--

'I say not that it is not the custom; nay, that my blessed wife and
myself have not followed it; but we have so oft had cause to repent
the necessity, that far be it from me ever to bid a woman forsake her
sucking child.'

'Is that Scripture?' asked Eustacie. 'Ah! sir, sir, tell me more! You
are giving me all--all--my child! I will be--I am--a Huguenot like her
father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride with you to La
Rochelle, and fight in your cause!'

'Nay,' said Maitre Gardon, taken by surprise; 'but, Lady, your vassals
are Catholic.'

'What matters it? In my cause they shall fight!' said the feudal Lady,
'for me and my