Patience walked in front of me with an impassive air. When we arrived at his little dwelling, we found my poor sergeant, who had just arrived likewise. Not finding any horse on which he could follow me, and not wishing to quit me, he had come on foot, and so quickly that he was bathed in perspiration. Nevertheless, the moment he saw us he sprang up full of life from the bench on which he had thrown himself under the bower of vine-branches, and came to meet us.
“Patience!” he cried, in a dramatic style which would have made me smile had it been possible for me to display a glimmer of mirth at such a moment. “Old fool! … Slanderer at your age? … Fie, sir! … Ruined by good fortune … you are … yes.”
Patience, impassive as ever, shrugged his shoulders and said to his friend:
“Marcasse, you do not know what you are saying. Go and rest awhile at the bottom of the orchard. This matter does not concern you. I want to speak to your master alone. I wish you to go,” he added, taking him by the arm; and there was a touch of authority in his manner to which the sergeant, in spite of his ticklish prided, yielded from instinct and habit.
As soon as we were alone Patience proceeded to the point; he began by a series of questions to which I resolved to submit, so that I might the more quickly obtain some light on the state of affairs around me.
“Will you kindly inform me, monsieur,” he said, “what you purpose doing now?”
“I purpose remaining with my family,” I answered, “as long as I have a family; and when this family is no more, what I shall do concerns no one.”
“But, sir,” replied Patience, “if you were told that you could not remain under the same roof with them without causing the death of one or the other, would you persist in staying?”
“If I were convinced that this was so,” I rejoined, “I would not appear in their presence. I would remain at their door and await the last day of their life, or the first day of their renewed health, and again implore a love I have not yet ceased to deserve.”
“Ah, we have come to this!” said Patience, with a smile of contempt. “I should not have believed it. However, I am very glad; it makes matters clearer.”
“What do you mean?” I cried. “Speak, you wretch! Explain yourself!”
“You are the only wretch here,” he answered coldly, at the same time sitting down on the one stool in the cottage, while I remained standing before him.
I wanted to draw an explanation from him, at all costs. I restrained my feelings; I even humbled myself so far as to say that I should be ready to accept advice, if he would consent to tell me the words that Edmée had uttered immediately after the event, and those which she had repeated in her hours of delirium.
“That I will not,” replied Patience sternly; “you are not worthy to hear any words from that mouth, and I shall certainly never repeat them to you. Why do you want to know them? Do you hope to hide anything from men hereafter? God saw you; for Him there are no secrets. Leave this place; stay at Roche-Mauprat; keep quiet there; and when your uncle is dead and your affairs are settled, leave this part of the country. If you take my advice, you will leave it this very day. I do not want to put the law on your track, unless your actions force me. But others besides myself, if they are not certain of the truth, have at least a suspicion of it. Before two days have passed a chance word said in public, the indiscretion of some servant, may awaken the attention of justice, and from that point to the scaffold, when a man is guilty, is but a single step. I used not to hate you; I even had a liking for you; take this advice, then, which you say you are ready to follow. Go away at once, or remain in hiding and ready for flight. I do not desire your ruin; Edmée would not desire it either—so—do you understand?”
“You must be insane to think that I could listen to such advice. I, hide myself! or flee like a murderer! You can’t dream of that! Come on! come on! I defy the whole of you! I know not what fury and hatred are fretting you and uniting you all against me; I know not why you want to keep me from seeing my uncle and cousin; but I despise your follies. My place is here; I shall not quit it except by order of my cousin or uncle; and this order, too, I must take from their own lips; I cannot allow sentence to be brought me by any outsider. So, thanks for your wisdom, Monsieur Patience; in this case my own will suffice. I am your humble servant, sir.”
I was preparing to leave the cottage when he rushed in front of me, and for a moment I saw that he was ready to use force to detain me. In spite of his advanced age, in spite of my height and strength, he might still have been a match, perhaps more than a match, for me in a struggle of this kind. Short, bent, broad-shouldered, he was a Hercules.
He stopped, however, just as he was about to lay hands on me, and, seized with one of those fits of deep tenderness to which he was subject in his moments of greatest passion, he gazed at me with eyes of pity, and said, in a gentle
