The Abbe thereupon took one look and broke into another tempest of entreaties and vows, which Madame Darpent by this time heard.  ’M. l’Abbe,’ she said, ’I pray you to be silent, I am no saint, but a friend, if Madame will allow me so to call myself, who has come to see her home.  But Oh!  Monsieur,’ she added, with the wonderful dignity that surrounded her, ’forget not, I pray you, that what is invisible is the more real, and that the vows and resolution you have addressed to me in error are none the less registered in Heaven.’

Mocker as the Coadjutor habitually was, he stood impressed, and uttered no word to mar the effect, simply saying:  ’Madame, we thank you for the lesson you have given us!  And now, I think, these ladies will be glad to close this painful scene.’

Meg, who with Madame Darpent, had satisfied herself that the wretch d’Aubepine had not hurt himself anything like as much as he deserved, declared herself ready and thankful to go away.  The Abbe and Lamont both entreated that she would take some refreshment before returning home, but she shuddered, and said she could taste nothing there, and holding tight by my arm, she moved away, though we paused while Madame Darpent was kneeling down and asking the Archbishop to bless her.  He did so, and her spirit seemed to have touched his lighter and gayer one, and to have made him feel what he was, for he gave the benediction with real solemnity and unaffected reverence for the old lady.

He himself handed her into the carriage, and he must greatly have respected her, for though he whispered something to her son about the grand deliverance of the victim through St. Margaret and the Dragon (an irresistible pun on the dragoon), yet excellent story as could have been made of the free-thinking Abbe on his knees to the old Frondeur’s widow, he never did make it public property.  I believe that it is quite true, as my sister’s clever friend Madame de Sevigne declares, that there was always more good in Cardinal de Retz, as he now is called, than was supposed.

Poor Meg had kept up gallantly through all her terrible struggle of many hours, but when we had her safely in the carriage in the dark, she sank back like one exhausted, and only held my hand and Madame Darpent’s to her lips by turns.  I wanted to ask whether she felt ill or hurt in any way, but after she had gently answered, ’Oh, no, only so thankful, so worn out,’ Madame Darpent advised me not to agitate her by talking to her, but to let her rest.  Only the kind, motherly woman wanted to know how long it was since she had eaten, and seeing the light of a little cabaret on the road, she stopped the carriage and sent her son to fetch some bread and a cup of wine.

For I should have said that M. Darpent had been obliged to return in the same carriage with us, since he could not accompany the Coadjutor on his way back.  He wished to have gone outside, lest his presence should incommode our poor Meg; but it had begun to rain, and we could not consent.  Nor was Meg like a Frenchwoman, to want to break out in fits the moment the strain was over.