The Knight of Malta. Эжен Сю

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      Seated in his saddle, and by reason of his wound unable to get out of it before the horse could plunge into the abyss, the old man gave his last thought to his God and his daughter,—made a vow of a weekly mass and an annual pilgrimage to the Chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, and prepared to die.

      From the height where he was standing, Erebus saw the danger of the baron; he saw that he was separated from him by the deep bed of the torrent, ten or twelve feet wide, toward which the horse was plunging.

      With a movement more rapid than thought, and an almost desperate leap, Erebus cleared the abyss, and rolled under the animal’s feet The baron screamed with terror,—he believed his saviour would be carried over into the golf, for, notwithstanding the pain and fright which this violent jerk had given him, Mistraon was not able to arrest the impetuosity of his spring, and dragged Erebus several steps.

      The latter, endowed with extraordinary strength and admirable presence of mind, had, as he fell, wound the reins around his wrists, while the horse, overcome by the enormous weight which hung upon him, seated himself on his haunches, having exhausted the impulse which instigated such activity.

      Scarcely ten steps separated the baron from the edge of the gulf, when Erebus slowly raised himself, seized the bloody bridle-bit with one hand, and with the other threw over the smoking neck of Mistraon the reins which he offered to the old man.

      All this transpired so rapidly that Reine des Anbiez and her betrothed, climbing the escarpment, arrived near the baron without having suspected the frightful danger he had just escaped.

      Erebus, having replaced the reins in the old man’s hands, picked up his cap, shook the dust from his clothes, and readjusted his hair, and, save the unnatural flush upon his cheeks, nothing in his appearance revealed the part he had taken in this event.

      “My God, father, why did you climb this steep? What imprudence!” cried Reine, excited but not frightened, as she bounded lightly from her nag, without seeing the unknown person standing on the other side of the baron’s horse.

      Then, seeing the pallor and emotion of the old man as he made a painful descent from his horse, the young girl perceived the danger which had threatened the baron, and throwing herself into his arms, she exclamed:

      “Father, father, what has happened to you?” “Reine, my darling child,” said the lord of Anbiez with a broken voice, embracing his daughter with effusion. “Ah, how frightful death would have been,—never to see you again!”

      Reine withdrew herself suddenly from her father’s arms, put her two hands on the old man’s shoulders, and looked at him with a bewildered air.

      “But for him,” said the baron, cordially pressing in his own hands the hand of Erebus, who had stepped forward, gazing with admiration on the beauty of Reine, “but for this young man, but for his courageous sacrifice, I should have been dashed to pieces in this gulf.”

      In a few words the old man told his daughter and Honorât de Berrol how the stranger had saved him from certain death.

      Many times during this recital the blue eyes of Reine met the black eyes of Erebus; if she slowly turned her glance away to fix it on her father with adoration, it was not because the manner of this young man was bold or presumptuous; on the contrary, a tear moistened his eyes, and his charming face expressed the most profound emotion. He contemplated this pathetic scene with a sublime pride. When the old man opened his arms to him with paternal affection, he threw himself into them with inexpressible delight, pressed him many times to his heart, as if he had been attracted to the old gentleman by a secret sympathy, as if this young heart, still noble and generous, had anticipated the throbs of another noble and generous heart.

      Suddenly Trimalcyon and Pog, who, twenty steps distant, had witnessed this scene from the height of the rock where they were resting, cried out to their young companion some words in a foreign language.

      Erebus started, the baron, his daughter, and Honorât de Berrol turned their heads quickly.

      Trimalcyon looked at the baron’s daughter with a sort of vulgar and sneering admiration.

      The strange physiognomy of these two men surprised the baron, while his daughter and Honorât regarded them with an instinctive terror.

      A skilful painter would have found wealth of material in this scene. Imagine a profound solitude in the midst of tremendous rocks of reddish granite, whose summit only was lighted by the last rays of the sun. On the first plane, almost on the edge of the torrent bed, the baron with his left arm around Reine, grasping in his right hand the hand of Erebus, and fixing an anxious, surprised look on Pog and Trimalcyon.

      These two, on the second plane, the other side of the golf, standing up side by side, with their arms crossed, outlining a characteristic silhouette upon the azure sky, distinctly perceptible across the ragged edges of the rocks.

      Lastly, a few steps from the baron, stood Honorât de Berrol, holding his horse and Reine’s nag, and farther still the two servants, one of whom was occupied in readjusting the harness of Mistraon.

      At the first words of the strangers, the beautiful features of Erebus expressed a sort of distressed impatience; he seemed to be undergoing an inward struggle; his face, which awhile ago was radiant with noble passions, gradually grew sombre, as if he were submitting to a mysterious and irresistible influence.

      But when Trimalcyon, in a shrill and bantering voice, again uttered a few words, as he designated Reine by an insolent glance, when the lord Pog had added a biting sarcasm in the same language, unintelligible to the other actors in this scene, the features of Erebus completely changed their expression.

      With an almost disdainful gesture, he roughly repulsed the hand of the old man, and fixed an impudent stare on Mlle, des Anbiez. This time the girl blushed and dropped her eyes.

      This sudden metamorphosis in the manners of the stranger was so striking that the baron recoiled a step. Nevertheless, after a silence of a few seconds, he said to Erebus, in a voice deeply moved: