“You will excuse me, father; I am needed at home, and I shall not be able to accompany you.”
“So much the worse. Go, then, quick, so as to come back quicker still. I fear nothing from these idiot sheep penned up in La Ciotat, but if they make any attempts upon my fishing-nets, I shall need you to keep me from making Laramée hang several of them over my nets as scarecrows!”
Then the baron, yielding to his changing and impetuous moods, altered his tone, and said, gaily, to the abbé, “Now, abbé, if I had some of these insolent rascals hanged, it would be serious, because I do not think you have in all your pharmacy a remedy for hanging.”
“I beg your pardon, monseigneur, but I have been told that if you make the patient, before his execution, drink a great quantity of iron water, which, so to speak, envelopes and saturates the vital principle, and if, on the other hand, the patient will apply to his naked skin some large magnetic stones, or a loadstone, the power of the said stone is such that, in spite of the hanging, he will retain the vital principle in his body, for reason of the irresistible power of attraction possessed by this metal. I would not dare affirm it, but I have been recently told of this remedy.”
“By Our Lady, that is a wonderful remedy, eh! Who informed you of it, abbé?”
“A poor man, who gives very little thought to the welfare of his soul, but who knows many beautiful recipes,--it is the Bohemian who healed your greyhound, monseigneur.”
“The Singer, Manjour! I imagine he occupies himself with the hanged and with hanging; he thinks of his future, you see. Each one preaches his own saint, does he not, abbé?--which does not prevent this vagabond being a skilful man. Never a better farrier lifted the foot of a hunting-horse than this same Bohemian,” added Raimond V.
When she heard the vagabond mentioned, Reine blushed again, and Honorât could scarcely repress a gesture of indignation.
“Dame Dulceline is enchanted with him; she tells me that, thanks to him, she will have a magnificent cradle for Christmas. But you have heard him sing, my daughter, what do you think of it? Because I am a bad judge, I am not acquainted with any songs but those the abbé sings, and our old Provençal refrains. Is it true that this wanderer has a wonderful voice?”
