The Seven Cardinal Sins: Envy and Indolence

David was worthy of the chaste and sacred embrace of this young woman, who saw her son about to brave death.

It was a weeping sister that he pressed to his heart.

Then, taking Frederick by the hand, he darted in the direction of the cart; both gave a last look at Madame Bastien, whose strength was exhausted, as she sank upon one of the rustic benches in the grove.

This attack of weakness past, Marie rose and stood, following her son and David with her eyes as long as she could see them.

CHAPTER XXIX

IN a quarter of an hour the little boat was lifted from the cart, and soon after was set afloat on the dead waters of the inundation.

"André, stay there with the cart," said the preceptor, "because the miserable people, to whose rescue we are going, will be altogether too feeble to walk to Madame Bastien's house."

"Well, M. David," said the old man.

And he added with emotion:

"Good courage, my poor M. Frederick."

"My child," said David, just as the boat was leaving the shore, "in order to be prepared for any emergency, do as I do. Take off your shoes and stockings, your coat and your cravat; throw your coat over your shoulders to prevent your taking cold. Whatever happens to me, do not concern yourself about me. I am a good swimmer, and in trying to save me, you would drown us both. Now, my child, at your oars, and row hard, but not too fast; husband your strength. I will be on the watch in front, and will sound the waters. Come now, with calmness and presence of mind, all will go well."

The boat now had left the shore.

Courage, energy, and the consciousness of the noble expiation he was about to attempt, supplied Frederick with all the strength that he had lost during his long illness of mind and body.

His beautiful features animated with enthusiasm, his eyes fixed on David, watching for every order, the son of Madame Bastien rowed with vigour and precision. At each stroke of the oar, the little boat advanced rapidly and without obstruction.

David, standing in front, straightening his tall form to its utmost height, his head bare, his black hair floating in the wind, his eye sometimes fixed on the almost submerged farmhouse, and sometimes on objects which might prove an obstacle in their course, – cool, prudent and attentive, showed a calm intrepidity. For some moments the progress of the boat was unimpeded, but suddenly the preceptor called: "Hold oars!"

Frederick executed this order, and after a few seconds the boat stopped.

David, leaning over the craft in front, sounded with his boat-hook the spot where he had seen light bubbles rising to the surface, for fear the boat might break against some obstacle under the water.

In fact, David discovered that the boat was almost immediately over a mass of willow branches, in which the little craft might have become entangled if it had been going at its highest speed. Leaning then his boat-hook against a log he met in the water, David turned his boat out of the way of this perilous obstruction.

"Now, my child," said he, "row in front of you, turning a little to the left, so as to reach those three tall poplars you see down there, half submerged in the water. Once arrived there, we will enter the middle of the overflow's current, which we feel even here, although we are still in dead water."

At the end of a few minutes David called again:

"Hold oars!"

And with these words David hooked his boat-hook among the branches of one of the poplars toward which Frederick was rowing; these trees, thirty feet in height, were three-quarters submerged. Sustained by the boat-hook, the little craft remained immovable.

"What! we are going to stop, M. David?" cried Frederick.

"You must rest a moment, my child, and drink a few swallows of this wine."

Then David, with remarkable coolness, uncorked a bottle of wine, which he offered to his pupil.

"Stop to rest!" cried Frederick, "while those poor people are waiting for us!"

"My child, you are panting for breath, your forehead is covered with perspiration, your strength is being exhausted; I perceived it by the shaking of your oars. We will reach these people in time; the water is not rising any longer, I have seen by sure signs. We are going to need all our energy and all our strength. Now, five minutes' rest taken at the right time may ensure those persons' safety as well as our own. Come, drink a few swallows of wine."

Frederick followed this advice, and realised the benefit of it, for already, without having dared confess it to David, he felt in the joints of his arms that numbness and rigidity which always succeed too much fatigue and muscular tension.

During this period of enforced delay the preceptor and his pupil looked upon the scene around them with silent horror.

From the point where they were they commanded an immense extent of water, no longer dead, such as they had just passed over, but rapid, foaming, impetuous as the course of a torrent.

From this vast expanse of water arose such a roar that from one end of the little boat to the other Frederick and David were obliged to shout aloud, in order to hear each other.

In the distance a line of dark gray water was the only thing which marked the horizon.

About six hundred steps from the boat they saw the farmhouse.

The roof had almost completely disappeared under the waters, and human forms grouped around the chimney could be vaguely distinguished.

Every moment, at a little distance from the craft, protected from collision by the three poplars, which served as a sort of natural palisade, thanks to David's foresight, floated all kinds of rubbish, carried along on the current which the little boat was to cross in a few moments.

On one side, beams and girders, and fragments of carpentry proceeding from the crumbling buildings; on the other side, enormous haycocks and stacks of straw, lifted from their base and dragged solidly along by the waters, like so many floating mountains, submerging everything they encountered; again, gigantic trees, torn up by the roots, rushed rapidly by as lightly as bits of straw upon a babbling brook, while in their rear followed doors unloosed from their hinges, furniture, mattresses, and casks, and sometimes in the midst of these wrecks could be seen cattle, some drowned, others struggling above the abyss soon to disappear under it, and, in strange contrast, domestic ducks, instinctively following the other animals, floated over the water in undisturbed tranquillity. Elsewhere, heavy carts were whirled above the gulf, and sometimes sank under the irresistible shock of immense floats of wood a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide borne along with the drift.

It was in the midst of these floating perils, upon an impetuous and irresistible current, that David and Frederick were forced to direct their boat in order to reach the farmhouse.

Then the danger of the salvage was becoming more imminent.

Frederick felt it, and as he saw David survey the terrible scene with an expression of distress, he said, in a firm and serious tone:

"You were right, my friend, we shall soon need all our strength and all our energy. This rest was necessary, but it seems cruel to take a rest with such a spectacle under our eyes."

"Yes, my child, courage is necessary even to take rest; blind recklessness does not see and does not try to see the danger, but true courage coolly looks at the chances. Hence, it generally triumphs over danger. If we had not taken some rest, we would certainly be dragged into the middle of the gulf that we are about to cross, and we would be destroyed."

Thus speaking, David examined with minute care the equipment of the boat and renewed one of the tholes, which had split under the pressure of Frederick's oar. For greater surety, David, by means of two knots of cord sufficiently loose, fastened the oars to the gunwale a little below their handle; in this way they could have free play, without escaping from Frederick's hands in the accident of a violent collision.

The rest of the five minutes had reached its end when Frederick, uttering an exclamation of involuntary surprise, became deathly pale, and could not conceal the distortion of his features.

David raised his head, followed the direction of Frederick's eyes, and saw what had alarmed his pupil.

As we have said, the inundation, without limit in the north and the east, was bounded in the west by the border of the forest of Pont Brillant, whose tall trees had disappeared half-way under the waters.

One of the woods of this forest, advancing far into the inundated valley, formed a sort of promontory above the sheet of water.

For some time, Frederick had observed, issuing from this promontory, so to speak, and rowing against the current, a long canoe, painted the colour of goat leather, and relieved by a wide crimson railing or guard.

On the benches, six oarsmen, wearing chamois skin jackets and crimson caps, were rowing vigorously; the cockswain seated at the back, where he controlled the canoe, seemed to follow the orders of a young man, who, erect upon one of the benches, with one hand in the pocket of his mackintosh of a whitish colour, indicated with the index finger of the other hand a point which could be nothing else than the submerged farmhouse, as, in that part of the valley, no other building could be seen.

David's little boat was too far from this canoe to enable him to distinguish the features of the person who evidently directed the manœuvre, but from the expression of Frederick's countenance he did not doubt that the master of the bark was Raoul de Pont Brillant.

The presence of the marquis on the scene of the disaster was explained by the message that the gendarme, whom David met, had carried in haste to the castle, demanding boats and men.