"Perhaps so; but I do not feel tired; and I do not know why I thought of you all through the night, whenever my father and I were in great danger.--'If we should both die,' I said to myself, 'who will save my Lauriane?'--Really, I thought of you as much, perhaps more than of my Mercedes and all the others. And I thought of you more when I met Pilar than at any other time." "Why did that bad girl make you think of your Lauriane?" Mario reflected a moment, then replied: "You see, when I was travelling with the gypsies, I used often to play and talk with that child, who knows Spanish and a little Arabic, and who made me feel sorry for her, because she always seemed sick and unhappy. Mercedes and I were always as kind to her as we could be, and she was fond of us. She called Mercedes _mother_ and me my _little husband_. And when I said: 'No, I don't want to be,' she would cry and sulk, so that I had to say to comfort her: 'Yes, yes, it is all right!' She did us a service last night, I agree; she went very promptly to give warning to Monsieur Robin and Monsieur Guillaume, as I told her to; but I had a horror of her all the same, because I knew that she was cruel and had no religion. And then that name of husband, which she had often given me against my will, made me sick, and I remembered that you and I had promised in sport to marry each other, and I saw the devil on one side of me, with her features, and my guardian angel on the other side, with yours." As Mario concluded, a stone from the little cottage fell so near Lauriane that she had a narrow escape from being wounded. The two children hastily departed, thinking that the cottage was falling to pieces; and they joined the marquis, who was awaiting them for dinner. LXI Meanwhile, Monsieur Poulain had been sought in vain to administer the sacrament to his dying parishioners; he could not be found. His house had been pillaged by the gypsies before any others. His servant had been roughly used and was in bed, praying to heaven for the return of the rector, concerning whom she was unable to give any information. He had disappeared two days before. At last, during the evening, just as Monsieur Robin and Guillaume d'Ars were about to retire with their men, leaving their wounded to the hospitable care of the marquis, Jean Faraudet, the farmer of Brilbault, appeared, and requested permission to make an important communication to his master. This is what he had to tell; and we will describe at the same time the events of the previous evening at Brilbault, whither we have not as yet had leisure to follow the numerous persons who had assembled there by agreement, to surround and storm the old manor.