side, were answering
with shouts, Patience ran to meet them. Edmee, longing to see her father
again, and forgetting all the horrors of this bloody night, whipped
up her horse and reached the hunters first. As soon as we came up with
them, I saw Edmee in the arms of a tall man with a venerable face. He
was richly dressed; his hunting-coat, with gold lace over all the seams,
and the magnificent Norman horse, which a groom was holding behind him,
so struck me that I thought I was in the presence of a prince. The signs
of love which he was showing his daughter were so new to me that I was
inclined to deem them exaggerated and unworthy of the dignity of a man.
At the same time they filled me with a sort of brute jealousy; for it
did not occur to my mind that a man so splendidly dressed could be
my uncle. Edmee was speaking to him in a low voice, but with great
animation. Their conversation lasted a few moments. At the end of it the
old man came and embraced me cordially. Everything about these manners
seemed so new to me, that I responded neither by word nor gesture to the
protestations and caresses of which I was the object. A tall young man,
with a handsome face, as elegantly dressed as M. Hubert, also came and
shook my hand and proffered thanks; why, I could not understand. He next
entered into a discussion with the gendarmes, and I gathered that he was
the lieutenant-general of the province, and that he was ordering them
to set me at liberty for the present, that I might accompany my uncle to
his chateau, where he undertook to be responsible for me. The gendarmes
then left us, for the chevalier and the lieutenant-general were
sufficiently well escorted by their own men not to fear attack from
any one. A fresh cause of astonishment for me was to see the chevalier
bestowing marks of warm friendship on Patience and Marcasse. As for the
cure, he was upon a footing of equality with these seigneurs. For some
months he had been chaplain at the chateau of Saint-Severe, having
previously been compelled to give up his living by the persecutions of
the diocesan clergy.

All this tenderness of which Edmee was the object, this family affection
so completely new to me, the genuinely cordial relations existing
between respectful plebeians and kindly patricians--everything that I
now saw and heard seemed like a dream. I looked on with a sensation that
it was all unintelligible to me. However, soon after our caravan started
my brain beg