“The way of transgressors is hard.”
OLD France was not a country very easy to lose oneself in. Law was everywhere: it was difficult to move at all from the beaten track without encountering some of its myrmidons, with the continually repeated watchword on their lips, “II est defendu.”
Yet Gustave had succeeded in losing himself, and so effectually, that it cost Goudin and Griselle many days of anxious search to find him. But at length they traced him to a solitary farmhouse in Normandy, where he had taken refuge, as it appeared, in a sudden panic, under a mistaken impression that he was pursued by the emissaries of the police. A malignant fever had laid him low amongst strangers, and brought him to the gates of the grave.
For more than a week they watched by his side, hope and fear alternating in their hearts. Hope prevailed at last. The fever was gone, and they dared to think that life was returning. One quiet autumn evening, a few rays of sunshine struggled through the closed shutters of the comfortable room where the patient lay sleeping, and rested on the fair head of Griselle, as she sat beside him. Gustave awoke from dreams of the time that his foot was injured and Griselle tending him, and the dream scarcely gone, he murmured, “Tell me the rest of that story about your old home, Griselle.”
Griselle smiled―her own sweet smile―and answered softly, “By-and-by, dear, when you have taken this soup and rested a little more.”
The old habit of obedience to Griselle in times of sickness prevailed. He drank the soup, and settled quietly to sleep again.
He slept long. When he awoke Griselle was gone, and a priest in a soutane sat beside him, reading his breviary by the light of a shaded lamp.
“Griselle!” Gustave thought he shouted the name, but it was a weak, scarce audible whisper.
“We will not disturb your sister now, my son,” the priest said. “When she wakes she will come to you.”
The gentle tone of authority suited Gustave’s present weakness, though it surprised him. He looked again, then exclaimed in a voice more like his own, though still very feeble, “Old Father Goudin! What wind has blown you here?”
“Be quiet, my son. Your sister could not have come here alone.”
“Here! Where? Where am I?”
“In Normandy, near Escouey. In a farmhouse belonging to kind and good country people, who took you in and tended you out of charity.”
“Have I been ill?”
“Yes, my son, very ill; but you are recovering, thanks to the good God. You must not talk now. I am going to read the Psalms for the evening.” Long ere the priest had finished reading Gustave was once more fast asleep.
As his strength increased, Gustave endeavored to recall the past. “What has been the matter with me, Griselle?” he asked.
“The fever, dear. The disease of the district, from which many are suffering now, and which you took the more easily because you were tired and overwrought.”
“Tired! Ay, that I was, and frightened too. I can’t bear to think of it. The long, long journey in that hateful diligence―I thought it would never end. The heat, the dust, the jolting of the days―the dreary discomfort of the nights, when we were often all packed together in one close, filthy room. It was dreadful! Once, I remember, my companions were soldiers, bound for the Mont St. Michel, and they talked so fiercely against the English that I wished myself leagues away; because I meant to personate an English student leaving France on account of the war. Another time―oh, horrible! we passed the body of a wretch hanging in chains by the roadside. They said he was a famous smuggler, and someone quietly remarked that he ought to have been broken on the wheel. I thought I should have fainted; and my face, no doubt, betrayed me, for one of the travelers, a kind man, who spoke like M. Gerard with a southern accent, gave me brandy and said such friendly words, that had he not left us at the next stage I really think I would have told him all. Worse was to come, however. Next day, when we stopped to dine, the police came to search the diligence for a passenger whose signalement had been sent to them from the last town. I don’t know who he was, or what was his crime; I only know that I nearly lost my reason. Uncontrollable terror seized me, and at the first chance I slipped away and made my escape across the country in the twilight, I knew not whither. After that, I remember no more.”
Griselle could not but feel amazed at the want of self-possession and common sense shown by her singularly clever and precocious brother. But this was no time for explanations or reproaches. She only said, laying her hand tenderly on his forehead, “My poor Gustave, how you have suffered!―But God has been good to you. And to us, helping us to find you.”
“Father Goudin too! What brings him here?” he asked, still confused.
“It was he who first spoke of following you, and who planned all the journey. But for him I could not have attempted it. How good and tender he has been to me throughout, I cannot tell you, Gustave. No knight of St. Louis could have shows himself more chivalrous.”
“And my mother, what does she say?” Gustave asked, not without hesitation.
“She does not say much, brother.”
“Don’t look at me that way, Griselle,” he exclaimed, burying his pale force in the coverlet. Then, alter a pause, “With all my philosophy, I rather think I have been―a fool.”
A statement Griselle forbore to dispute, for Goudin had said to her, “Let conscience do its work, my daughter.”