‘Nay, Nanon,’ said M. Gardon, ’wherefore should she part with the charge that God has laid on her?’

Eustacie gave a little cry of grateful joy.  ’Oh, sir, come nearer!  Do you, indeed, say that they have no right to tear her from me?’

’Surely not, Lady.  It is you whose duty it is to shield and guard her.’

’Oh, sir, tell me again!  Yours is the right religion.  Oh, you are the minister for me!  If you will tell me I ought to keep my child, then I will believe everything else.  I will do just as you tell me.’  And she stretched out both hands to him, with vehement eagerness.

‘Poor thing!  This is no matter of one religion or another,’ said the minister; ’it is rather the duty that the Almighty hath imposed, and that He hath made an eternal joy.’

‘Truly,’ said Nanon, ashamed at having taken the other side:  ’the good pasteur says what is according to nature.  It would have gone hard with me if any one had wished to part me from Robin or Sara; but these fine ladies, and, for that matter, BOURGEOISES too, always do put out their babes; and it seemed to me that Madame would find it hard to contrive for herself—­let alone the little one.’

’Ah! but what would be the use of contriving for myself, without her?’ said Eustacie.

If all had gone well and prosperously with Madame de Ribaumont, probably she would have surrendered an infant born in purple and in pall to the ordinary lot of its contemporaries; but the exertions and suffering she had undergone on behalf of her child, its orphanhood, her own loneliness, and even the general disappointment in its sex, had given it a hold on her vehement, determined heart, that intensified to the utmost the instincts of motherhood; and she listened as if to an angle’s voice as Maitre Gardon replied to Nanon—­

’I say not that it is not the custom; nay, that my blessed wife and myself have not followed it; but we have so oft had cause to repent the necessity, that far be it from me ever to bid a woman forsake her sucking child.’

‘Is that Scripture?’ asked Eustacie.  ’Ah! sir, sir, tell me more!  You are giving me all—­all—­my child!  I will be—­I am—­a Huguenot like her father! and, when my vassals come, I will make them ride with you to La Rochelle, and fight in your cause!’

‘Nay,’ said Maitre Gardon, taken by surprise; ’but, Lady, your vassals are Catholic.’

‘What matters it?  In my cause they shall fight!’ said the feudal Lady, ‘for me and my daughter!’

And as the pastor uttered a sound of interrogative astonishment, she continued—­

’As soon as I am well enough, Blaise will send out messages, and they will meet me at midnight at the cross-roads, Martin and all, for dear good Martin is quite well now, and we shall ride across country, avoiding towns, wherever I choose to lead them.  I had thought of Chantilly, for I know M. de Montmorency would stand my friend against a Guisard; but now, now I know you, sir, let me escort you to La Rochelle, and do your cause service worthy of Nid de Merle and Ribaumont!’ And as she sat up on her bed, she held up her little proud head, and waved her right hand with the grace and dignity of a queen offering an alliance of her realm.