II
The haymakers paused and leaned upon their forks, children left the strawberry vines and climbed upon the fences, as the coach from the distant city dashed down the street towards the four corners, and the welcoming hotel, with its big dormer windows and well-carved veranda. As it whirled by, the driver shouted something at a stalwart forgeron, standing at the doorway of his smithy, and he passed it on to a loitering mealman and a lime-burner.
A girl came slowly over the crest of a hill. Feeling her way with a stick, she paused now and then to draw in long breaths of sweet air from the meadows, as if in the joy of Nature she found a balm for the cruelties of Destiny.
Presently a puff of smoke shot out from the hillside where she stood, and the sound of an old cannon followed. From the Seigneury, far over, came an answering report; and Tricolors ran fluttering up on flagstaffs, at the four corners, and in the Cure's garden.
The girl stood wondering, her fine, calm face expressing the quick thoughts which had belonged to eyes once so full of hope and blithe desire. The serenity of her life—its charity, its truth, its cheerful care for others, the confidence of the young which it invited, showed in all the aspect of her. She heard the flapping of the flag in the Cure's garden, and turned her darkened eyes towards it. A look of pain crossed her face, and a hand trembled to her bosom, as if to ease a great throbbing of her heart. These cannon shots and this shivering pennant brought back a scene at the four corners, years before.
Footsteps came over the hill: she knew them, and turned.
"Parpon!" she said, with a glad gesture.
Without a word he placed in her hand a bunch of violets that he carried. She lifted them to her lips. "What is it all?" she asked, turning again to the Tricolor.
"Louis Napoleon enters the Tuileries," he answered. "But ours was the son of the Great Emperor!" she said. "Let us be going, Parpon: we will plats these on his grave." She pressed the violets to her heart.
"France would have loved him, as we did," said the dwarf, as they moved on.
"As we do," the blind girl answered softly.
Their figures against the setting sun took on a strange burnished radiance, so that they seemed as mystical pilgrims journeying into that golden haze, which veiled them in beyond the hill, as the Angelus sounded from the tower of the ancient church.