Voban looked for a moment as if he might do some wild thing. His
spirit, his devilry, pleased Doltaire, and he laughed. "Who would
have thought our Voban had such wit? The trade of barber is
double-edged. Razors should be in fashion at Versailles."
Then he sat down, while Voban made a pretty show of touching off
my person. A few minutes passed so, in which the pealing of bells,
the shouting of the people, the beating of drums, and the calling
of bugles came to us clearly.
A half hour afterwards, on our way to the Intendant's palace, we
heard the Benedictus chanted in the Church of the Recollets as
we passed--hundreds kneeling outside, and responding to the chant
sung within:
"That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands
of all that hate us."
At the corner of a building which we passed, a little away from
the crowd, I saw a solitary cloaked figure. The words of the chant,
following us, I could hear distinctly:
"That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies,
might serve Him without fear."
And then, from the shadowed corner came in a high, melancholy
voice the words:
"To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace."
Looking closer, I saw it was Mathilde.
Doltaire smiled as I turned and begged a moment's time to speak
to her.
"To pray with the lost angel and sup with the Intendant, all in
one night--a liberal taste, monsieur; but who shall stay the good
Samaritan!"
They stood a little distance away, and I went over to her and
said, "Mademoiselle--Mathilde, do you not know me?"
Her abstracted eye fired up, as there ran to her brain some
little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her who I
was.
"There were two lovers in the world," she said: "the Mother of
God forgot them, and the devil came. I am the Scarlet Woman," she
went on; "I made this red robe from the curtains of Hell--"
Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars
to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, "Do you not
know me? Think, Mathilde!"
I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought
it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec,
and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from
her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips,
"Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots."
I looked at her, saying nothing--I knew not what to say. Presently
her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. "You are a
prisoner, too," she said; "but they will not kill you: they will
keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you
will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find
It--never. God hid first, and then It hides.... It hides, that
which you lost--It hides, and you can not find It again. You go
hunting, hunting, but you can not find It."
My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not
know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor
could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do?
It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not
understand.
Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight,
illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane,
for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous
finger, "I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find
her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I
have--except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples
grew. Go,"--she pushed me gently away--"go to your prison, and pray
to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil." Then she
thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many
others at her girdle. "If you wear that, the ring of fire will not
grow," she said. "I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too.
She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir
the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked
eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!"
She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning,
stole softly away towards the St. Charles River.
Doltaire's mockery brought me back to myself.
"So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful
man," said he.