CHAPTER XI
THE ABBÉ AND THE TREE.
While the Jesuit was guiding Gabrielle through the labyrinthine way of the woods, Pepin was reckoning with himself on a hill-top in that part of the forest known as the desert.
"God deliver me from all abbés!" said he ruefully; and then with unction in his voice he began to cry loudly—
"This way, Monsieur l'Abbé, this way. Guardian angels keep your holy feet out of yonder bog. Dieu! I thought that I had lost you."
Now the Abbé's feet were not holy; they were only swollen with the gout; Pepin knew well enough that the venerable man was not lost. The truth was that the artful guide found himself in such a pretty net, that he had led the priest three good leagues out of his way, while he himself reconsidered his position. "For," said he, "if I carry this Abbé to the palace, the king will learn that I have been lying; or again, if I carry him back to the château, he will want his ten crowns of me. Corbleu! I must think of it."
The Abbé's mule came labouring up the hill, and presently the corpulent body of the Churchman was to be observed in the moonlight. His face was scarlet with passion, and with the wounds which the thorns had cut in his skin.
"Fool and knave," cried he to Pepin, "that makes pretence to be a guide, and yet cannot lead me six leagues through the forest. By the God above me, I will crack my staff upon your back if you do not find the path this instant."
Pepin shrugged his shoulders.
"Look you, my father," said he, "what an ill thing that would be—for the instant is already gone, and we are not come to the path. Did you crack your staff, there would be one good cudgel less in the world, and, like enough, no master for it when the morning came. Oh, we are in a pretty place! Body of Paul, I am near to being lost as ever I was."
"Lost!" gasped the Abbé, "then the Lord help us. Do you dare to tell me that you know nothing of this road?"
Pepin scratched his head.
"Yonder," said he, "lies the brigands' den, as full of cut-throats as a nest of eggs. Yonder again" and here he swept his arm round bravely, indicating the wood they were about to enter "is the very tree upon which they hanged the body of the Chevalier Geoffrin after they had robbed him of his purse and cut off his hands. Turn where you will, my father, you may pick up assassins like pebbles in a river's bed. Aye, it is a pretty place—a place for prayer and not for jest."
Beads of perspiration gathered thick upon the Abbé's brow; his hands trembled so that he could not finger his rosary.
"Good Pepin," said he, "you are my friend; I have confidence in you, Pepin; you will lead me out of this."
"Aye, though Beelzebub himself stood in the path. Courage, Monsieur l'Abbé, do you hear the wolves—Dieu, what throats they have!"
Pepin had more than a suspicion that "the wolves" were only watch-dogs howling at the moon, but he saw no reason to enlighten the now trembling Abbé. For the matter of that, he had little stomach himself for the ugly copse which they were entering; and would have given a half of his wage to have been in his bed again. He had spoken no more than the truth when he said that the near woods were a haven for cut-throats and brigands; and guide that he was, he would not willingly have fallen into their hands. Truly, this lumbering abbé was a burden to him; nor could he at the first think of any plan by which he might rid himself of his company. And still thinking upon it, he plunged into the darkness of the copse.
"Oh blessed Thaddeus, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Xystus, Cornelius, pray for me this night!" murmured the Abbé, while his mule stumbled in the dark place, and the hoofs of the beast squelched in the mud of the bog. "Merciful Heaven, that I should have left my bed for this!"
"Aye, that's it," chimed in Pepin, "if we had not left our beds! God knows where we shall next stretch ourselves in yonder bog, perchance, if your saints are sleeping. And we shall have company too, my father. Did you hear that cry? Put me in the pillory if that was the night bird's voice."
"Then what was it, Pepin?"
"Corbleu! what was it? Some devil of the woods abroad for all I know. Oh, it is a pretty place."
The Abbé's teeth were chattering audibly; the cold had chilled his very marrow; the mud was thick upon his cassock; his face was blue and bleeding.
"Pepin," said he at last in his desperation, "lead me to some house. I can go no further. I care not where it is, or in whose company I lie. Take me where you will. I must sleep."
He spoke in a voice pitiful enough to have drawn tears from the rock; but the cunning guide had no heart for his situation. Pepin heard only an appeal which gave him an excuse for turning once more from the way; and the opportunity fell in well with his plans.
"To a house, my father! Oh, you could ask me nothing that I would do so gladly. To a house! Mother of God, I know an honest fellow not half a league from here who will answer to our knock with a bed of moss and a cup of wine which a prince bishop might drink. Courage, monsieur, courage! You are at the end of your troubles. Once past yonder copse, wherein there may lie perhaps a hundred rogues, to say nothing of the wolves, I will venture my head on your safety. Only have a little patience."
He turned his horse quickly at the saying, but so clumsy was the movement that his lantern was extinguished by it; and there was now but one light remaining. The wood to which they had come was like a patch of virgin forest, a maze of climbing plant and creeper, of blackthorn and briar, of bog and bramble. So thick was the undergrowth that man might have been treading it for the first time; so black were the pools that they seemed to be the waste waters of Styx-like rivers, hidden in the caverns below the hills. Game swarmed here; boars crashed through the branches; foxes sneaked across the bridle-path; birds, disturbed at roost, rose up with hissing cries and loud flapping of their wings. Over all was the intense darkness of the forest, night at her zenith, the supremity of solitude and of nature.
Any other man but Pepin would have been lost beyond hope in this labyrinth; but the guide knew the forest as he knew his own face. The very darkness of the way inspired him. He turned gaily from the path he had struck at the first, and riding as it were straight towards a gloomy bog whose shallow waters caught a leaden glow of the moon's beams, he encouraged the bewildered Abbé to new efforts.
"Well done, monsieur, well done," he cried; "a half a league ridden like that and you shall smack your lips over a wine-cup. Oh, was there ever such an idea! That you should ask me to lead you to a house! Blood of the martyrs, you bear yourself bravely."
"Is it very far, Pepin?" asked the Abbé, in a very weak voice.
"The matter of a league and a half, as I told you, my father."
"You said half-a-league, rascal," cried the Abbé.
"What, do you think that I lie?" exclaimed Pepin, stopping his horse suddenly.
"The good God forbid," stammered the Abbé; "only take me to a house, and I will forgive you all."
Pepin was not to be appeased so easily.
"Hark ye, Monsieur l'Abbé," said he, "another word like that and I leave you to pace the three leagues"
"Three leagues, ciel!"
"As I said—three leagues. If you know the road so well, my father, I will even follow the path at your mule's tail."
The Abbé shivered at the idea.
"Saints and angels soften the heart of this guide," he muttered.
They had now come to the slope of the wood upon the border of the dirty bog. Pepin's horse, which had trodden the path often, went down fearlessly to the water, but the Abbé's mule was in no mood for the venture, jibbing at it and sliding down at length with his forefeet set out as an advance guard.
"This way, Monsieur l'Abbé, this way," cried Pepin; "oh, what a beast to carry the body of a holy priest. I would not hire him for a German mountebank. The ford is here, my father. Oh, have a care!"
The warning was well meant, but too late to be of any service to the Abbé, whose mule tripped suddenly upon the edge of the black ditch and shot its rider far out into the stream. For one long minute the Abbé floundered wildly in the mud. Then he snatched at the low branch of an overhanging oak—and so drew himself up, all bedraggled and half-suffocated, to a haven of refuge among the boughs.
"Pepin, Pepin!" he gasped; "oh, help me! I am dying, Pepin! Dieu, what cold, what suffering!"
But Pepin was already riding away through the wood on the opposite bank.
"Patience, a little patience, holy father," cried he, "I go to get help; the good God guard you until I return."
"May all the devils of hell go with you!" shouted the Abbé.
And thus it was that when dawn came, a forester observed the strange spectacle of a venerable Abbé saying his prayers in the bough of a tree.