One day, when he had missed his footing on the roof
and had rather a serious fall, Edmee, then still a child, had won his
heart by the tears she had shed over this accident, and the artless
attentions she had shown him. And ever since Patience had come to dwell
on the edge of the park, Marcasse had felt still more attracted toward
Sainte-Severe; for in Patience Marcasse had found his Orestes. Marcasse
did not always understand Patience; but Patience was the only man who
thoroughly understood Marcasse, and who knew how much chivalrous honesty
and noble courage lay hidden beneath that odd exterior. Humbly bowing
to the hermit's intellectual superiority, the weasel-hunter would stop
respectfully whenever the poetic frenzy took possession of Patience and
made his words unintelligible. At such a time Marcasse would refrain
from questions and ill-timed remarks with touching gentleness; would
lower his eyes, and nodding his head from time to time as if he
understood and approved, would, at least, afford his friend the innocent
pleasure of being listened to without contradiction.
Marcasse, however, had understood enough to make him embrace republican
ideas and share in those romantic hopes of universal levelling and a
return to the golden age, which had been so ardently fostered by old
Patience. Having frequently heard his friend say that these doctrines
were to be cultivated with prudence (a precept, however, to which
Patience gave but little heed himself), the hidalgo, inclined to
reticence both by habit and inclination, never spoke of his philosophy;
but he proved himself a more efficacious propagandist by carrying about
from castle to cottage, and from house to farm, those little cheap
editions of _La Science du Bonhomme Richard_, and other small treatises
on popular patriotism, which, according to the Jesuits, a secret society
of Voltairian philosophers, devoted to the diabolical practice of
freemasonry, circulated gratis among the lower classes.
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