with Cavalier, he
fancied he could follow and see him, now, as a shadow, then, brighter
again, yet it seemed as if his feverish state presented him figuring to
himself, in real colours and contour, the portrait of his friends and
the place in which he was. Eustace kissed his hands and bathed them
with tears. "Oh, my dear young master!" cried he then sobbing, "that
you should now come among us, and have been obliged to experience
anything so bad from our wildest prophet! yes, brother Ravanel, is the
worst, should I have said in my stupidity, the most godless: may heaven
forgive me my sins. No, all of us and himself too must often pray, that
the Lord may moderate his ardent zeal, for he is almost always in
anger, and only too frequently as if raving. Are you better now,
gracious sir?" Edmond pressed his hand and said, "I feel that the wound
is not of much consequence, it was the loss of blood alone made me
faint; but brother Eustace, as I am now a brother to you all, leave off
that empty mode of the men of the world, and call me thou, as it is
customary among you."

"As thou wilt!" exclaimed the former greatly affected: "but I am as if
in heaven, that thou brother, that thou, who wast so proud shouldst
thus converse with me. They always deny miracles, and yet this is truly
one."

"Leave him to repose, brother Eustace," said Mazel, "do not excite and
tease him any more in order that he may be soon restored." "Relate to
me," said Edmond, "brother Abraham, that my imagination may be directed
to a fixed point, which otherwise in its diseased state is wandering
lost and bewildered. Do I remember rightly, that thou saidst to-day in
that extraordinary dispute, which my soul cannot even yet understand,
thou hadst given rise to the present war. Or was it not so? tell me
something about it, for although I have grown up in this neighbourhood,
I know but little connected with these affairs."

Mazel replied: "It is true brother Edmond, it is also not true, as one
may consider the matter, and thus it is perhaps with most things in the
world. I was a lad of about twenty years of age, when, suddenly they
abolished our reformed religion, it went to the hearts of all
throughout the whole country. I was then only a forest-ranger in the
service of the Lord of Mende, on the banks of the Rhone. About this
time they began to emigrate from the country. Nobles, merchants,
peasants, and citizens went away (for that was yet permitted) towards