“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 prick your fingers.”

“It’s all done, there’s the bed, and a few pricks 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 chattered with cold and weakness.  Germain took her in his arms to warm her; and anxiety, compassion, an irresistible 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 gutter.”