"And that was what I call a piece of extreme impertinence!" interjected the Marchioness, interrupting her niece. "The idea of giving the ten louis to the beggar to pray for the absolution of the Abbot's sins! Was not that to insinuate that the holy man had a heavily loaded conscience? I was not aware of the fellow's effrontery and ingratitude; I was still too sea-sick and under the effect of the fright we went through. Well, then, to return to the salt water rat, the fellow's disdain for the remuneration offered him, cancels even more completely whatever debt we may have owed him."
"That is not my opinion, aunt. Accordingly I requested our host, Monsieur Tilly, to be kind enough to ascertain the name and address of our brave countryman, who can only be a temporary resident of Delft--to judge by what has been reported to me."
"And for what purpose did you make the _kind_ inquiry, dear niece?"
"I wish to commission Monsieur Tilly to assure our generous rescuer of our gratitude, and to ask him to excuse the strange conduct of Monsieur the Abbot towards him--excuses that, I must admit, I had not the courage to offer on the spot; I felt so confused at the humiliation that he was put to, and, besides, I felt too indignant at the conduct of the Abbot to trust myself to speak to him. Just now, as I saw him crossing the square--"
"You probably had a wish to call him from the window?" asked the Marchioness suffocating with repressed anger. "Truly, dear niece, you are losing your head more and more. Such a disregard for propriety on the part of a person of your quality!"
"I never thought of calling our countryman out of the window; I was only sorry that Monsieur Tilly did not happen to be with us at the time. He might have gone out after him and asked him to step in."
"My dear, what you say upon this subject is so absurd, that I even prefer to hear your praises of Colonel Plouernel--although that topic is not of the most edifying."
"Nothing easier than to accommodate you, aunt," answered Bertha with a smile that seemed to foreshadow numerous subjects for the suffocation of the Marchioness. "In a manuscript left by Colonel Plouernel under the title of 'Instructions to His Son' a most extraordinary fact was recorded. In reminding his son of the antiquity of his family, which goes back to the time of the conquest of Gaul by the Franks, the colonel added the natural observation that there are no conquerors without conquered, and that the Franks, from whom we of the noble race claim to descend, despoiled and then enslaved the Gauls. He then proceeded to say that a family of the Gallic race, a descendant of whom the colonel became acquainted with at the siege of La Rochelle, handed down to its own members from age to age, first, from the time of the conquest of Gaul by the Romans, and then, from the conquest of the country by the Franks, a series of legends that chronicled the trials and misfortunes undergone by the several and succeeding members of that family, which, strange coincidence! on the occasion of the frequent uprisings of the enslaved Gauls, more than once fought arms in hand and victoriously against the seigneurs of our own Frankish house! Our ancestor, the colonel, approves and extols the right of conquered peoples to rise in insurrection.