But there was quite another side to their idyl, and Marianne mentioned it to her husband.  She had chatted with Madame Angelin, and it appeared that the latter wished to enjoy life, at all events for the present, and did not desire to be burdened with children.  Then Mathieu’s worrying thoughts once more came back to him, and again at this fresh example he wondered who was right—­he who stood alone in his belief, or all the others.

“Well,” he muttered at last, “we all live according to our fancy.  But come, my dear, let us go in; we disturb them.”

They slowly climbed the narrow road leading to Chantebled, where the lamp shone out like a beacon.  When Mathieu had bolted the front door they groped their way upstairs.  The ground floor of their little house comprised a dining-room and a drawing-room on the right hand of the hall, and a kitchen and a store place on the left.  Upstairs there were four bedrooms.  Their scanty furniture seemed quite lost in those big rooms; but, exempt from vanity as they were, they merely laughed at this.  By way of luxury they had simply hung some little curtains of red stuff at the windows, and the ruddy reflection from these hangings seemed to them to impart wonderfully rich cheerfulness to their home.

They found Zoe, their peasant servant, asleep over her knitting beside the lamp in their own bedroom, and they had to wake her and send her as quietly as possible to bed.  Then Mathieu took up the lamp and entered the children’s room to kiss them and make sure that they were comfortable.  It was seldom they awoke on these occasions.  Having placed the lamp on the mantelshelf, he still stood there looking at the three little beds when Marianne joined him.  In the bed against the wall at one end of the room lay Blaise and Denis, the twins, sturdy little fellows six years of age; while in the second bed against the opposite wall was Ambroise, now nearly four and quite a little cherub.  And the third bed, a cradle, was occupied by Mademoiselle Rose, fifteen months of age and weaned for three weeks past.  She lay there half naked, showing her white flowerlike skin, and her mother had to cover her up with the bedclothes, which she had thrust aside with her self-willed little fists.  Meantime the father busied himself with Ambroise’s pillow, which had slipped aside.  Both husband and wife came and went very gently, and bent again and again over the children’s faces to make sure that they were sleeping peacefully.  They kissed them and lingered yet a little longer, fancying that they had heard Blaise and Denis stirring.  At last the mother took up the lamp and they went off, one after the other, on tiptoe.

When they were in their room again Marianne exclaimed:  “I didn’t want to worry you while we were out, but Rose made me feel anxious to-day; I did not find her well, and it was only this evening that I felt more at ease about her.”  Then, seeing that Mathieu started and turned pale, she went on:  “Oh! it was nothing.  I should not have gone out if I had felt the least fear for her.  But with those little folks one is never free from anxiety.”