"They were compelled to proceed again, in order to reach with safety the solitary village in the mountain heights." "You must know," said the doctor, when they were again seated in the coach, "that it is merely to an old maidservant of mine I am now conducting you, a simple person, who served me long, but who is, however, so faithful and honest, that it is almost a scandal, what perhaps many free thinking exquisites would say of her. She has married a gardener, or peasant, who also plays the surgeon in the mountains. There you will pass for an old invalid cousin, whose house and farm the Camisards have set fire to; you will find your daughter there already, the intelligent child however must not betray you; the husband and wife would suffer themselves to be torn to pieces rather than give out any thing else of you. If you will but sit half an hour in the room with Barbara, she herself will take you for her cousin, and there will be no further necessity for lying. That is why such things often succeed better in this class than in a higher one: education they have none, but they possess the proper capacity for belief. Only lose not courage yourself, and in that solitude there do not become a timid hare's foot. All may yet be well." With these and similar conversations they, at length, arrived in the afternoon at the village in the centre of the mountains. The houses lay dispersed midway, or above the declivity of the mountain; each had a garden and shrubbery attached to it, and the church situated on the highest point, looked down on the lowly cottages. The little dwellings after which the travellers were obliged to inquire, stood at the extremity of the village, immediately over a rapidly flowing brook, a kitchen-garden was in front and a few chesnut, ash, and plantain-trees spread a shade and freshness around. When the travellers alighted, the rather elderly hostess advanced to the little vestibule to meet them. "Welcome! right welcome!" said she half jestingly, but with the heartiest good will: "So the old gentleman is my cousin? I rejoice in the acquisition of his relationship." "Where is my daughter?" asked the Lord of Beauvais. "Hush! hush!" said Barbara with a significant look; "my little cousin sleeps in the room above--which you too will now inhabit, my much honoured cousin." "That's all right," said the doctor: "only study nicely your expressions; and what is sick Joseph doing?" "Ah, heaven!" said the old woman, he did not get over his fright, "the poor man has died at the next village below there, for when he was obliged to make off so quickly, helter skelter with my little cousin, and had lost his master, who had taken another road, and that the police officers became so troublesome, and the militia would also interfere, then all that affected his liver and spleen, and he died of it. "Poor Joseph!" sighed the Counsellor.