since. Then signifying to the friar to lean down
his ear to his mouth, he employed the first efforts of his feeble breath
in telling him (what, alas! was a contrived falsehood) that he was a
nephew to the governor of Huy, a neutral town in the neighbourhood; and
that if he could take any method of conveying him thither, he did not
doubt but his uncle would liberally reward him. He had indeed a friend at
Huy, who I think was governor, and, if I mistake not, had been acquainted
with the captain, his father, from whom he expected a kind reception; but
the relation was only pretended. On hearing this, they laid him on a sort
of hand-barrow, and sent him by a file of musqueteers towards the place;
but the men lost their way, and, towards the evening, got into a wood in
which they were obliged to continue all night. The poor patient's wound
being still undressed, it is not to be wondered at that by this time it
raged violently. The anguish of it engaged him earnestly to beg that they
would either kill him outright, or leave him there to die without the
torture of any further motion; and indeed they were obliged to rest for a
considerable time, on account of their own weariness. Thus he spent
the second night in the open air, without any thing more than a common
bandage to staunch the blood. He has often mentioned it as a most
astonishing providence that he did not bleed to death, which, under God,
he ascribed to the remarkable coldness of these two nights.

Judging it quite unsafe to attempt carrying him to Huy, from whence they
were now several miles distant, his convoy took him early in the morning
to a convent in the neighbourhood, where he was hospitably received, and
treated with great kindness and tenderness. But the cure of his wound was
committed to an ignorant barber-surgeon who lived near the house, the
best shift that could then be made, at a time when it may easily be
supposed persons of ability in their profession had their hands full of
employment. The tent which this artist applied, was almost like a peg
driven into the wound; and gentlemen of skill and experience, when they
came to hear of the manner in which he was treated, wondered how he could
possibly survive such management. But by the blessing of God on these
applications, rough as they were, he recovered in a few months. The Lady
Abbess, who called him her son, treated him with the affection and care
of a mother; and he always declared that every thing w