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.

"But pray, make yourselves comfortable," pursued the old hostess,--"sit
down then cousin, poor man, there on that soft chair; you must now
forget, that you were formerly accustomed to anything better."

"Well," asked Vila, "and the household, how fares it? what is your
husband doing?"

"Thanks for the kind inquiry," answered the chattere