ont 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.

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 eve