CHAPTER XVIII. THE MOONBEAM



She wandered east, she wandered west,
She wandered out and in;
And at last into the very swine's stythe
The queen brought forth a son.--Fause Foodrage


The morrow was Sunday, and in the old refectory, in the late
afternoon, a few Huguenots, warned by messages from the farm, met
to profit by one of their scanty secret opportunities for public
worship. The hum of the prayer, and discourse of the pastor, rose
up through the broken vaulting to Eustacie, still lying on her bed;
for she had been much shaken by the fatigues of the day and alarm
of the night, and bitterly grieved, too, by a message which Nanon
conveyed to her, that poor Martin was in no state to come for her
in the next day; but he and his wife having been seized upon by
Narcisse and his men, and so savagely beaten in order to force from
them a confession of her hiding-place, that both were lying
helpless on their bed; and could only send an entreaty by the
trustworthy fool, that Rotrou would find means of conveying Madame
into Chollet in some cart of hay or corn, in which she could be
taken past the barriers.

But this was not to be. Good Nanon had sacrificed the sermon to
creep up to Eustacie, and when the congregation were dispersing in
the dusk, she stole down the stairs to her husband; and a few