"Reflect, that you are perhaps risking the loss of your future happiness."
"I will not forget your recommendation, I swear to you; I am risking too great a stake in this game, which must decide my future life, to let myself be induced to commit any act of violence."
"Good; I am happy to hear you speak thus; but have confidence, my friend, I feel certain that we shall succeed."
"It always hears those who appeal to it with a pure heart and a lively faith. Hope, I tell you; and now, my dear Don Martial, permit me to say a few words to our worthy friend, Belhumeur."
"What for? have I any secrets from you? You can hear what I am going to say to him."
"You have nothing to say to me, Valentine," the hunter said, with a shake of his head, "nothing but what I know already; I have no other interest in what is about to take place beyond the deep friendship that attached me to the count and now to you. You think that the recollection I have preserved of our unhappy friend cannot be sufficiently engraven on my heart for me to risk my life at your side in avenging him; but you are mistaken, Valentine, that's all. I will not abandon you in the hour of combat; I will remain at your side even should you order me to leave you. I tell you that I swear, and have taken an oath to that effect, to make a shield of my body to protect you, if it should be necessary. Now, give me your hand, and suppose we say no more about it?"
Valentine remained silent for a moment; a scalding tear ran down his bronzed cheeks, and he took the hand of the honest, simple-minded Canadian, and merely uttered the words--
They then rose, and returned to their carriage, after Valentine had warned his faithful bodyguard, Curumilla, by a signal that he could leave his hiding place, as the interview was over. A quarter of an hour later the three gentlemen reached the house in the Calle de Tacuba, were Curumilla was already awaiting them.
On the morrow, Mexico awoke to a holiday; nothing extraordinary, in a country where the year is a perpetual holiday, and where the most frivolous pretext suffices for letting off _cohetes_, that supreme amusement of the Mexicans.
This time the affair was serious, for the inhabitants wished to celebrate in a proper manner the anniversary of the Proclamation of Independence, of which the day to which we allude was the eve.