“Oh yes, no doubt,” said he, “it is too hot here. Mother, give the young lady your arm, and you, François, carry an arm-chair outside.”

  “Here is the arm-chair you ask for,” said the latter.

  “No, no,” said Mademoiselle Euphrosine, “it will be nothing.”

  “Oh, but it is,” persisted the old woman. “You are quite pale, dear young lady, and one would say you were going to faint.”

  “It’s air,” cried Bernard, “air that the young lady wants.”

  “Do at any rate give me your arm, Monsieur Bernard,” said she. with a languishing air.

  Bernard saw that there was no drawing back.

  “Why, young lady,” he said, “with the greatest pleasure.”

  Then in an undertone to Catherine, “Stay there, I am coming back.”

  Taking Euphrosine by the arm, he drew her along more hastily than her apparent weakness seemed quite to warrant, while François, in obedience to the order he had received, followed. Then he said, “Here is the arm-chair,” to which Mère Watrin added, “And some vinegar to rub her temples.”

  Catherine was left alone. What had just taken place, Bernard’s genuine cordiality, Euphrosine’s feigned collapse, had spoken more clearly to her eyes and yet more to her heart than all the explanations and speeches in the world could have done.

  “Ah, now,” she thought, “Mère Marianne may say what she pleases, I am quite assured.”

  Scarcely had she ended these words when Bernard came in again and threw himself at her feet. At the same time François, pulling the door to on the outside, shut them in with their love and their happiness.

  “Oh, Catherine!” cried Bernard, clasping the girl’s knees, “how I love you! How happy I am!”

  Catherine drooped her head and the eyes of the two young people spoke so eloquently what they had to say, that without a single word being uttered, their breath mingled and their lips met. Their two breasts gave vent to two simultaneous cries of joy which were as one, and they remained with dim eyes plunged in such a sweet ecstasy that they did not see Mathieu’s malevolent head thrust through the partly opened door of the kitchen, nor hear his harsh voice muttering, “Ah, Monsieur Bernard, you gave me a slap on the head; that slap shall cost you dear, my lad!”

  CHAPTER XI.

  DREAMS OF LOVE.

  AN hour later, like birds that have taken flight, carried away on a breeze of morning, a sunbeam, a murmur of the trees, the two young people had disappeared and in their stead, in the low-roofed parlour of the Maison Neuve, were two men bending over a map of the forest of Villers-Cotterets, tracing an outline that one of them had a great tendency to enlarge, but that the other at every extension brought back within the limits agreed on.

  These two men were Anastase Raisin, Maire of Villers, and our old friend, Guillaume Watrin.

  The bounds that the wood-merchant was always wanting to enlarge and the head-keeper pitilessly restricted to the line traced by the Inspector’s compasses were those of the “lot “bought by Monsieur Raisin at the last adjudication.

  At last Watrin, nodding his head approvingly and knocking his short pipe against his nail to get rid of the ashes, said to the wood-merchant, “Do you know that it is a fine lot you have there and not at all dear?”

  Monsieur Raisin rose in his turn.

  “Not dear at 200,000 francs?” cried he. “Egad! it seems money is easy for you to come by, Père Guillaume.”

  “Oh yes, that’s very fine talking!” was the reply. “Nine hundred livres a year, house and firing, every day a brace of rabbits in the pot, and on high days and holidays a bit of boar, a man cannot but become a millionaire on all that, can he?”

  “Bah!” said the timber-merchant, looking at Watrin and smiling that subtle smile which one may call the smile of trade, “you always get to be a millionaire if you choose — relatively, of course.”

  “Then tell me something of your secret,” rejoined Guillaume. “That will please me, on my honour.”

  The timber-merchant again looked at the keeper with a steady and shining eye. Then as if he thought that the moment for making so important an overture was not yet come, he replied, “Why, yes, you will be told the secret after dinner when we are alone, glass in hand, drinking the health of our respective children, and if there is a way to manage, well, you know, Père Guillaume, we will do a deal together.”

  The latter looked up in his turn, pursing his lips and shaking his head; and it was difficult enough to guess what answer he was going to make to this half-overture on the Maire’s part when Marianne entered in a thorough fright.

  “Oh, M. le Maire,” she cried, “there’s a calamity!”

  “Good gracious, what is it, Madame Watrin?” asked he, somewhat uneasy.

  As for Watrin, accustomed to the ways of his wife, he seemed less impressed than his guest, the wood-merchant.

  “What is it, eh?” said the latter again.

  “What has happened, old lady?” asked Watrin.

  “What has happened is, that here’s poor Mademoiselle Euphrosine saying she is indisposed.”

  “Bah! That is nothing,” said the Maire, who probably knew his daughter as well as the other knew his wife.

  “Oh, stuff and nonsense!” muttered the Forester, who for his part seemed to have arrived at a pretty correct estimate of Mademoiselle Euphrosine.

  “But,” went on the mother, “she wants absolutely to go back to town.”

  “Come, all right!” cried Raisin. “Is Chollet there? If he is, he can drive her home.”

  “No, he has not been seen yet, and that, I believe, is what has added to the young lady’s ailment.”

  “Where is she, Euphrosine I mean?”

  “She has got into the carriage again and is asking for you.”

  “Well, all right. Wait, that’s it. Till we meet, Père Watrin. We have to have a long talk. I will drive her back and in an hour — the horses are good — in an hour I shall be here again, and if you are a good fellow — Well, shake hands: I’ll say no more to you now. See you again, Père Guillaume. See you again, Mère Watrin. Look well to the stew, and there will be pins in plenty to fasten your cooking apron with.”

  And as the Maire departed at these words the old lady saw him out, making many curtsies and saying, “See you again, M. le Maire! Make many excuses for me to Mademoiselle Euphrosine.”

  Guillaume had remained where he was, shaking his head. Decidedly he had not made a mistake as to the reason of the Maire’s amiability. It was a question, as he had said, of pulling a cotton cap over his eyes.

  So when Marianne came back crestfallen at the young lady’s departure and saying, “Ah! my poor man, I hope you will scold Bernard?”

  “And what should I scold him for?” inquired the Forester gruffly.

  “What? Why, for having no eyes but for Catherine and scarcely so much as saying ‘How d’ye do? ‘to Mademoiselle Raisin.”

  “Oh! That was only because he had seen Mademoiselle Raisin almost every day these eighteen months, while he has only seen his cousin twice in the same time.”

  “All the same... Oh dear! oh dear!” muttered Marianne miserably.

  Père Guillaume remained not only insensible to this despair, but it even seemed to inspire him with some impatience.

  He looked at his wife.

  “Tell me now, mother,” he asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Did you hear what M. le Maire said to you?”

  “What about?”

  “About the game stew which he advised you to be careful of.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s good advice, wife, that he gave to you there.”

  “But what I wanted to tell you is...”

  “And then there is the tart that ought to be put in the oven.”

  “Oh, yes, I understand, you are sending me away.”

  “I am not sending you away. I only tell you to go to the kitchen and see if I am there.”

  “Very well,” said she, with wounded dignity, “I am going to the kitchen; I am going.”

  “Look!” said the Forester, following his wife with his eyes, “to think that it is no harder than that to be pleasant, and that you so seldom are.”

  “Oh, I am pleasant because I am going away then. That’s a pretty thing to say.”

  He went to a window, pulled his pipe out of his pocket, and began to whistle a tune.

  “Oh yes,” said the mother, “that’s all very fine, what you are doing now; whistle away, do!”

  Then as she reached the kitchen door, “At last!” she said. And out she went.

  “Yes,” muttered Guillaume, left alone, “yes, I whistle because I see the poor dear children, and because it makes me happy to see them! Look you,” he added, although there was no one to share his pleasure with, “would not anyone say that they were two angels, so beautiful and smiling are they? They are coming this way; don’t let us disturb them.”

  And Father Guillaume, still whistling, went up to his room, lowering the pitch as they came nearer so that at the moment he opened his room door, they appeared on the threshold of the parlour downstairs.

  But from the top of the staircase where he had stopped so as to see them as long as possible he murmured these words, “God bless you, my children! They do not hear me; so much the better. It is because they are listening to another voice which sings more softly than mine.”

  He was not mistaken; this voice which did not reach him but which he guessed at, was the heavenly voice of youth and love. And this is what it said by the mouth of the two young people.

  “Will you always love me?” asked Catherine.

  “Always,” answered Bernard.

  “Well, it is strange,” said she, “this promise which ought to fill my heart with joy makes me feel quite sad instead.”

  “Poor, dear Catherine!” murmured he in his softest tone, “if I make you sad by telling you that I love you, I don’t know what to say to make you gay.”

  “Bernard,” went on the girl, answering her lover’s thought rather than his words, “your parents have been married for twenty-six years and excepting some little differences of no consequence live as happily as the day of their wedding. Every time I look at them, I ask myself if we shall be as happy, and above all, if we shall be happy as long as they have been.”

  “And why not?” said Bernard.

  “The question I ask you,” replied Catherine, “my mother, if I had one, would ask you herself in her solicitude for the happiness of her daughter: I am an orphan and all my happiness, as all my love, is in your hands. Listen, Bernard, if you think it possible that you may some day love me less than you do now, let us part at once! I should die of it, I know, but if you were to cease to love me some day! Oh, I would rather die while you still love me than live to see that day.”

  “Look at me, Catherine,” answered Bernard, “and you will find my answer written in my eyes.”

  “But have you tried yourself, Bernard, are you sure that it is not the affection of a brother rather than the passion of a lover that you have for me?”

  “I have not tried myself,” said the young man, “but you have tried me.”

  “I! And how so?”

  “By your eighteen months of absence. Do you think that those eighteen months of separation are not test enough? Apart from my two short journeys to Paris and some days of happiness, since you left I have not lived, for it is not living to live without a heart in your bosom, to love nothing, to enjoy nothing, to be in a bad humour all day long. My God! all who know me will tell you the same; my forest, this beautiful forest where I was born, my great oaks that rustle in the wind, my beautiful beeches, with their silver bark, well, since your going away, all these things have ceased to give me any pleasure. In old days, when I started in the morning, in the voices of all the wakening birds that sang their matins to the Lord of Heaven, I heard your voice. In the evening when I came back and leaving my companions to follow the path I plunged into the wood, it was because there was a fair white phantom that summoned me, gliding among the trees and showing me the way, and which vanished when I drew near the house, and which I found standing waiting for me at the door. Since you went away, Catherine, there has not been a morning that I have not said to the others, ‘Where are the birds? I no longer hear them sing as I used! ‘And there has not been an evening when instead of arriving before all the rest, gay, brisk and joyous, I have not come last, tired, doleful and weary!”

  “Dear Bernard!” murmured Catherine, offering her fair brow to the young man to kiss.

  “But since you have been here, Catherine,” he went on with that youthful enthusiasm which belongs only to the first beatings of the heart, to the first dreams of imagination, “since you have been here, all is changed. The birds have come back to the branches, my beautiful phantom, I am sure, is waiting for me yonder under the tall trees to make me leave the path and guide me towards the house, and on the threshold of that house, oh! on the threshold I am assured of finding again, no longer the ghost of love, but the reality of happiness.”

  “Oh, my Bernard, how I love you!” cried Catherine.

  “And then... and then...” he continued, frowning and passing his hand over his forehead, “and then... But no, I will not speak to you of that.”

  “Speak to me of everything. Tell me all! I want to know all.”

  “And then, this morning, Catherine, when that scamp of a Mathieu showed me the Parisian’s letter — the letter in which that man spoke to you, you, my Catherine, to whom I speak as I should to the Virgin, in which that man spoke to you, my fair lily of the woods, as he does to his town girls, — well, I felt such a pang I thought I was going to die, and at the same time such fury that I said to myself, ‘I am going to die it may be, but before dying I will kill him first, anyway! ‘“

  “Yes,” said she, in her most caressing tone, “and that is why you went off along the Gondreville road with your gun loaded, instead of waiting quietly for your Catherine here. That is why you covered six leagues in two hours and a half at the risk of dying of fatigue and heat. But you were punished — you saw your Catherine an hour the later for it. It is true the innocent was punished with the guilty, jealous boy!”

  “Yes, yes, jealous!” murmured he, with clenched teeth, ‘“that is the word. Oh, you don’t know what jealousy is, you don’t.”

  “I do. For an instant I was jealous,” said she, laughing. “But don’t be afraid, I am so no longer.”

  “That is to say, look you,” he went on, putting his closed fist to his forehead, “that is to say that if ill-luck had so willed it that you had not received that letter, or having received it had not altered your route; if, in fact, you had come by Villers-Cotterets, and had met that fool — dear, dear, dear! at the very thought of it, Catherine, my hand goes out towards my gun and...”.

  “Hush!” cried she, alarmed at the look on the young man’s face, and at the same time, as it were, startled by an apparition. “I be quiet? And why should I be quiet?”

  “There, there, there!” murmured she, putting her mouth near his ear, “there, he is there, at the door!”

  “He!” cried Bernard, “and what can he want here?”

  “Silence,” said Catherine, pressing the young man’s arm, “it was your mother herself who asked him to come with the Maire and Mademoiselle Euphrosine. Bernard, he is your guest.”

  In sooth, at that moment a young man, elegantly dressed in morning frock-coat and a light-coloured cravat with a whip in his hand, had just made his appearance in the doorway, and seeing the young people almost in each other’s arms, seemed to be asking himself whether he ought to go in or out.

  Bernard’s glance met his for a moment. The eyes of the young keeper darted lightning. The Parisian realized instinctively that he had just fallen into the lion’s den.

  “Excuse me, Monsieur Bernard,” he murmured, “but I was looking for...”

  “Yes,” was the answer, “and in looking you have found what you did not look for, eh?”

  “Bernard!” said Catherine, quite low, “Bernard!”

  “Let be,” said the young keeper, trying to free himself from Catherine’s embrace, “I have a few words to say to M. Chollet. When they are said, when the question is clearly and distinctly set forth between us, all will be done.”

  “Bernard!” pleaded she, “be calm, keep your temper.”

  “Do not be afraid. Only let me say two words to... this gentleman, or faith, I will say four instead of two.”

  “Very well, but...”

  “But I tell you to be quiet.”

  And with a movement, the violence of which could not be mistaken, he pushed Catherine towards the door. The girl realized that physical or moral obstacle would only augment the anger of her lover. She withdrew with her hands clasped, contenting herself with beseeching looks.

  The door of the kitchen having closed on her, the two young men were alone. Bernard convinced himself that the door was properly shut by going himself and settling the latch in its socket. Then coming back to the Parisian, “Well, sir,” he said, “I too was looking for something or rather some one. I was looking for you, M. Chollet!”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  The young man smiled. As soon as a man began to attack him he would answer him manfully.

  “You were looking for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet I am not difficult to find, I fancy.”

  “Except when you start off in the morning in your tilbury to wait for the coach from Paris on the Gondreville road.”

  The young man drew himself up, and with a scornful smile, said, “I go out in the morning at what hour I please, and I go where I please, Monsieur Bernard. That is my business.”

  “You are perfectly right, sir. Every one is free to act as he will. But there is a truth which you will not dispute, I hope, although it comes from me, any more than I did your maxim.”

  “And that is?”

  “That every one is master of his own.”

  “I do not dispute it, Monsieur Bernard.”

  “Now you understand, Monsieur Chollet. My property is my field, if I am a farmer; my sheepfold if I raise stocks; my homestead if I am a yeoman. Well, if a boar comes out of the forest and damages my field, I lie in ambush and shoot the boar. A wolf comes out of the wood to kill my sheep; I send a bullet at him and that is for his pains. A fox comes into my farmyard and kills my fowls; I catch the fox in a trap and break his head with kicks from my booted heel. As long as the field was not mine, as the sheep were not owned by me, as the fowls belonged to others I did not claim this right; but directly field, sheep and poultry are mine, it is another matter.