ode
in a hut near the chateau. Ever since the Abbe Aubert had found a refuge
from ecclesiastical persecution under the chevalier's roof, he had no
longer been obliged to arrange secret meetings with the hermit. He had,
therefore, strongly urged him to give up his dwelling in the forest
and to come nearer to himself. Patience had needed a great deal of
persuasion. Long years of solitude had so attached him to his Gazeau
Tower that he hesitated to desert it for the society of his friend.
Besides, he declared that the abbe would assuredly be corrupted with
commerce with the great; that soon, unknown to himself, he would come
under the influence of the old ideas, and that his zeal for the sacred
cause would grow cold. It is true that Edmee had won Patience's heart,
and that, in offering him a little cottage belonging to her father
situated in a picturesque ravine near the park gate, she had gone to
work with such grace and delicacy that not even his techy pride could
feel wounded. In fact, it was to conclude these important negotiations
that the abbe had betaken himself to Gazeau Tower with Marcasse on that
very evening when Edmee and myself sought shelter there. The terrible
scene which followed our arrival put an end to any irresolution still
left in Patience. Inclined to the Pythagorean doctrines, he had a horror
of all bloodshed. The death of a deer drew tears from him, as from
Shakespeare's Jacques; still less could he bear to contemplate the
murder of a human being, and the instant that Gazeau Tower had served
as the scene of two tragic deaths, it stood defiled in his eyes, and
nothing could have induced him to pass another night there. He followed
us to Sainte-Severe, and soon allowed his philosophical scruples to be
overcome by Edmee's persuasive powers. The little cottage which he was
prevailed on to accept was humble enough not to make him blush with
shame at a too palpable compromise with civilization; and, though the
solitude he found there was less perfect than at Gazeau Tower, the
frequent visits of the abbe and of Edmee could hardly have given him a
right to complain.

Here the narrator interrupted his story again to expatiate on the
development of Mademoiselle de Mauprat's character.

Edmee, hidden away in her modest obscurity, was--and, believe me, I
do not speak from bias--one of the most perfect women to be found in
France. Had she desired or been compelled to make herself known to the
world, she wo