"This time I give it up!" said Germain, stamping on the ground. "A spell has been cast on us, that's sure, and we shall not get away from here till daylight. This place must be bewitched."
"Well, well, let's not lose our tempers," said Marie, "but let us make the best of it. We'll make a bigger fire, the child is so well wrapped up that he runs no risk, and it won't kill us to pass a night out-of-doors. Where did you hide the saddle, Germain? In the middle of the holly-bushes, you great stupid! It's such a convenient place to go and get it!"
"Here, take the child, while I pull his bed out of the brambles; I don't want you to prick1 your fingers."
"It's all done, there's the bed, and a few pricks2 aren't sword-cuts," retorted the brave girl.
She proceeded to put little Pierre to bed once more; the boy was so sound asleep by that time, that he knew nothing about their last journey. Germain piled so much wood on the fire that it lighted up the forest all around; but little Marie was at the end of her strength, and, although she did not complain, her legs refused to hold her. She was deathly pale, and her teeth chattered3 with cold and weakness. Germain took her in his arms to warm her; and anxiety, compassion4, an irresistible5 outburst of tenderness taking possession of his heart, imposed silence on his passions. His tongue was loosened, as if by a miracle, and as all feeling of shame disappeared, he said to her:
"Marie, I like you, and I am very unfortunate in not making you like me. If you would take me for your husband, neither father-in-law nor relations nor neighbors nor advice could prevent me from giving myself to you. I know you would make my children happy and teach them to respect their mother's memory, and, as my conscience would be at rest, I could satisfy my heart. I have always been fond of you, and now I am so in love with you that if you should ask me to spend my life fulfilling your thousand wishes, I would swear on the spot to do it. Pray, pray, see how I love you and forget my age! Just think what a false idea it is that people have that a man of thirty is old. Besides, I am only twenty-eight! a girl is afraid of being criticised for taking a man ten or twelve years older than she is, because it isn't the custom of the province; but I have heard that in other places they don't think about that; on the other hand, they prefer to give a young girl, for her support, a sober-minded man and one whose courage has been put to the test, rather than a young fellow who may go wrong, and turn out to be a bad lot instead of the nice boy he is supposed to be. And then, too, years don't always make age. That depends on a man's health and strength. When a man is worn out by overwork and poverty, or by evil living, he is old before he's twenty-five. While I—But you're not listening to me, Marie."
"Yes, I am, Germain, I hear what you say," replied little Marie; "but I am thinking of what my mother has always told me: that a woman of sixty is much to be pitied when her husband is seventy or seventy-five and can't work any longer to support her. He grows infirm, and she must take care of him at an age when she herself is beginning to have great need of care and rest. That is how people come to end their lives in the gutter7."
"Parents are right to say that, I agree, Marie," said Germain; "but, after all, they would sacrifice the whole of youth, which is the best part of life, to provide against what may happen at an age when one has ceased to be good for anything, and when one is indifferent about ending his life in one way or another. But I am in no danger of dying of hunger in my old age. I am in a fair way to save up something, because, living as I do with my wife's people, I work hard and spend nothing. Besides, I will love you so well, you know, that that will prevent me from growing old. They say that when a man's happy he retains his youth, and I feel that I am younger than Bastien just from loving you; for he doesn't love you, he's too stupid, too much of a child to understand how pretty and good you are, and made to be courted. Come, Marie, don't hate me, I am not a bad man; I made my Catherine happy; she said before God, on her death-bed, that she had never been anything but contented8 with me, and she advised me to marry again. It seems that her heart spoke9 to her child to-night, just as he went to sleep. Didn't you hear what he said? and how his little mouth trembled while his eyes were looking at something in the air that we couldn't see! He saw his mother, you may be sure, and she made him say that he wanted you to take her place."
"Germain," Marie replied, greatly surprised and very grave, "you talk straightforwardly10, and all you say is true. I am sure that I should do well to love you, if it wouldn't displease11 your relations too much; but what would you have me do? my heart says nothing to me for you. I like you very much; but although your age doesn't make you ugly, it frightens me. It seems to me as if you were something like an uncle or godfather to me; that I owe you respect, and that there would be times when you would treat me as a little girl rather than as your wife and your equal. And then my girl friends would laugh at me, perhaps, and although it would be foolish to pay any attention to that, I think I should be ashamed and a little bit sad on my wedding-day."
"Those are childish reasons; you talk exactly like a child, Marie!"
"Well, yes, I am a child," she said, "and that is just why I am afraid of a man who knows too much. You see, I'm too young for you, for you are finding fault with me already for talking foolishly! I can't have more sense than belongs to my years."
"Alas12! mon Dieu! how I deserve to be pitied for being so awkward and for my ill-success in saying what I think! Marie, you don't love me, that's the fact; you think I am too simple and too dull. If you loved me a little, you wouldn't see my defects so plainly. But you don't love me, you see!"
"Well, it isn't my fault," she replied, a little wounded by his dropping the familiar form of address he had hitherto used; &............