“Distant lands, say you! is not Saumur in Anjou? and is not Anjou within three miles of you, here where you are sitting?”
“May be so, M. Chapeau; but still, with your leave, I say Saumur is distant. Can you get there in one day from here?”
“Why no, not in one day.”
“Nor in two?”
“Why, no again; though they might do it in two. They’ll start from here Monday morning with light, and they’ll reach Saumur on Wednesday in time to look about them, and learn what they have to do the next morning.”
“That’s three day’s going, and three coming, and heaven only knows how many days there; and you don’t call that distant! Who’s to feed them all I’d like to know?”
“Feed them!” said Chapeau. “I wish you could see all the bullocks and the wine at Durbellière; they’ll have rations like fighting-cocks. I only pray that too much good living make them not lazy.”
“Were I a man,” said Annot, as she put on the table a fresh bottle of wine, which she had just brought in from the little inn, “were I a man, as I would I were, I would go, whether or no.”
“Would you, minx,” said the father; “it’s well for you that your petticoats keep you at home.”
“Don’t be too sure of her, Michael Stein,” said Paul Rouel, the keeper of the inn; “she’ll marry a soldier yet before the wars are over.”