“O, Madama! It is something, that, to have seen the stars by daylight. They were all about my head, crowning me. Perhaps their glory intoxicated my brain. In any case, I was fierce now to go and fetch my comrade, and force him to come up and believe. And I went down to him again, and roused him from his stupor, and drove him before me up the heights. He was quite dumb and silly, like a drunken man; but my will was great, and I got him there. He could see nothing; the snow-blindness was in his eyes; he would hear nothing. ‘Take your Martha,’ he said, ‘and let me sleep.’ That was all. How I got him down and home is known to none but God; it is not known to me.”
Louis-Marie, listening in a glow, had caught something of the speaker’s transport. He turned, with kindled eyes, to Yolande. “See,” his looks confessed, “what I have foregone for your sake!” She gave a sudden cry “Ah!” and pointed down. The hawk had swooped into a tree, and re-emerged with a little fluttering life in its claws.
“That is very pitiful,” she said. “I had heard the poor thing singing to his mate but a moment ago.”
Balmat took up his hat.
“He sang of himself, by the token, Madama,” he said—“of what a fine fellow he was. It is the way with cock-birds. That was a good lesson to me. Be sure, it said, before you start to blow your own trumpet, that an enemy is not within hearing.”
As, having made his respectful adieux, he went down the hill at a swing, the lodge gate clanked at the foot of the drive far below. They saw his diminishing figure halt against another which was approaching. The two appeared to exchange greetings and a few words. At the end, Balmat resumed his way down, and the stranger turned again to the ascent. As he came on, the cuttings of the hill path swallowed him, and he disappeared from view. In the same instant, Yolande, bent over her work, heard her husband get hurriedly to his feet, and glanced up at him. Silks and needles went to the ground. She was by him in a moment.
“What is it—Louis! Louis!”
He was deadly pale; he was holding his hand to his forehead in a lost way.
“Take me in, take me in!” he muttered. “I—I think the sun—ah!—it was perhaps too strong for me.”
He was wild over her momentary hesitation.