"A second time I have to thank you for life," said Monsieur de Villardin, after a few exclamations concerning the sort of insanity that had seized upon the Parisians--"a second time I have to thank you for life.--Take care," he added, with a faint smile, "take care! for you are causing me to accumulate debts which I shall never have the means of paying. But, tell me, how came you here, and where have you been for the last three months? Several of your men declared they saw you killed in attempting to repulse the party who set fire to the château of Virmont. I need hardly tell you that I and Father Ferdinand have grieved for you, and Laura has wept for you ever since."
"Thank God for that, at least," I replied: "not for your grieving for me, my lord, but for the safety of Father Ferdinand and Mademoiselle de Villardin, in regard to both of whom I have been in a cruel state of anxiety ever since I last saw them." I then proceeded to detail, as briefly as possible, all the events that had occurred to me during the last three months; and I could see that Monsieur de Villardin, while rejoicing in my escape, was moved with no slight indignation both at the treatment I had received from Gaspard de Belleville, and at the fact of his former page having been the person to burn his house to the ground.
"The villain," he said, "did hot even know that my household and my child were not still within the building; for their escape was owing solely to the civility of the officer at the village, who sent up to warn them that he was about to march, and that other parties were coming up, who might not be so well disposed towards them as himself. They took advantage of this information in time, and sought refuge in one of the cottages in the wood; otherwise they might all have been burned indiscriminately; for the first act that the enemy's soldiers were seen to commit was that of throwing a number of grenades into the open windows, by which means the whole house was fired in a few minutes. If I live three days longer," he added, after detailing these particulars, "I will represent the whole of that young villain's conduct to the Prince de Condé: he must not go any longer unpunished, whatever may have been my reasons for not dealing severely with him hitherto."