Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/35

Rh of officials was sometimes still more annoying. The peaceful and polite people whom he had met in the early part of his travels appeared transformed into a savage race. On one occasion a poor woman who had guided him for a few sous over the mountains, was arrested before his eyes and dragged to a dilapidated chateau which had been turned into a prison, and Young learnt that her crime was merely that of having aided him, a stranger and a suspicious person in those parts. The good-hearted Englishman determined at once to follow the woman and her persecutors, in the hope of procuring her release by attesting her innocence. They were followed by a mob of the country people, and by the woman's children crying bitterly. At the chateau a solemn committee of the authorities sagely remarked, that "in such dangerous times, when all the world knew that so great and powerful a person as the queen was conspiring against France, for a woman to become the conductor of a stranger who appeared to be making so many suspicious inquiries, was a high offence. In vain Young assured them that she was but a poor woman who had offered, in the hope of gaining a few sous for herself and family, to direct him to see the springs and volcanic craters famous in those parts; but her judges asked him, sternly, what he had to do with springs and volcanoes, and refused to release her. Determined not to abandon the poor woman who had been thus involved in trouble on his account, Young declared that if they imprisoned her they should do the same by him, and answer for their conduct to higher authorities. This lofty language seems to have impressed the rural magistrates, who were finally prevailed on to release her.