Edmond had again returned to consciousness, and on opening his eyes, he saw Mazel by his couch and the swarthy Eustace, who although wounded himself, had stayed to serve him and was kneeling by his bed. He could not for a long time recall to his recollection how he had come there, and the fierce looking men, with the view from the hut over the mountains and woods, threw him into a strange reverie. However, he was soon enabled to connect one idea with another, and to reassemble all his faculties. His imagination was still busied with Cavalier, he fancied he could follow and see him, now, as a shadow, then, brighter again, yet it seemed as if his feverish state presented him figuring to himself, in real colours and contour, the portrait of his friends and the place in which he was. Eustace kissed his hands and bathed them with tears. "Oh, my dear young master!" cried he then sobbing, "that you should now come among us, and have been obliged to experience anything so bad from our wildest prophet! yes, brother Ravanel, is the worst, should I have said in my stupidity, the most godless: may heaven forgive me my sins. No, all of us and himself too must often pray, that the Lord may moderate his ardent zeal, for he is almost always in anger, and only too frequently as if raving. Are you better now, gracious sir?" Edmond pressed his hand and said, "I feel that the wound is not of much consequence, it was the loss of blood alone made me faint; but brother Eustace, as I am now a brother to you all, leave off that empty mode of the men of the world, and call me thou, as it is customary among you." "As thou wilt!" exclaimed the former greatly affected: "but I am as if in heaven, that thou brother, that thou, who wast so proud shouldst thus converse with me. They always deny miracles, and yet this is truly one." "Leave him to repose, brother Eustace," said Mazel, "do not excite and tease him any more in order that he may be soon restored." "Relate to me," said Edmond, "brother Abraham, that my imagination may be directed to a fixed point, which otherwise in its diseased state is wandering lost and bewildered. Do I remember rightly, that thou saidst to-day in that extraordinary dispute, which my soul cannot even yet understand, thou hadst given rise to the present war. Or was it not so? tell me something about it, for although I have grown up in this neighbourhood, I know but little connected with these affairs."