and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, that epoch when mankind,
"Has he gone? Has the vile phantom gone?" he repeated several times. "Ho, there, Saint-Jean! My pistols! Now, my men! Throw the fellow out of the window!"
"What has happened?" I said the Edmee, in a low tone. "Who has been here in my absence?"
"If I told you," answered Edmee, "you would hardly believe it. You would think my father and I were mad. But I will tell you everything presently; let us attend to him."
With her soft words and loving attentions she succeeded in calming the old man. We carried him to his room, and he fell into a quiet sleep. When Edmee had gently withdrawn her hand from his and lowered the wadded curtain over his head, she joined the abbe and myself, and told us that a quarter of an hour before we returned a mendicant friar had entered the drawing-room, where, as usual, she was embroidering near her father, who had fallen asleep. Feeling no surprise at an incident which frequently happened, she had risen to get her purse from the mantel-piece, at the same time addressing a few words to the monk. But just as she was turning round to offer him an alms the chevalier had awakened with a start, and eyeing the monk from head to foot, had cried in a tone half of anger and half of fear:
"What the devil are you doing here in that garb?"
Thereupon Edmee had looked at the monk's face and had recognised . . .
"A man you would never dream of," she said; "the frightful John Mauprat. I had only seen him a single hour in my life, but that repulsive face has never left my memory, and I have never had the slightest attack of fever without seeing it again. I could not repress a cry.
" 'Do not be afraid,' he said, with a hideous smile. 'I come here not as an enemy, but as a supplicant.'
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