“I should be able to,” she said; “I feel so like a fish, or a lizard, whose skin is a little loose on his body. Am I not a dreadful sight, Jean-Louis?”
“Thou art never anything but beautiful in my eyes.”
“Fie, then, fie then! cannot I see myself in them! Very small and very ugly, Jean-Louis—an imp of black waters.”
“And I see babies in thine, Carinne. That is what the peasants call them. And I never loved my own image so well as now. It has a little blue sky to itself to spite the reality. It is a fairy peeping from a flower. Ma mie, and art thou so very cold and hungry?”
“Truly, my teeth go on munching the air for lack of anything better.”
“It is pitiful. We must brave the next town or village to procure food. There are no berries here, Carinne; no little conies to catch in a springe of withe and spit for roasting on an old sabre; and if there were, we must not stop to catch them.”
“It is true we must eat, then. The plunge has to be made—for liberty or death. Formez vos bataillons! Advance, M. le Comte, with thy heart jumping to the hilt of thy sword!”
She cried out merrily. She was my own, my property, the soul of my confidence; yet I could have cheered her in the face of a multitude as (God forgive the comparison!) the mob cheered the guenipe Théroigne when she entered the Bastille.
So, once more we drove and were driven forward; and presently, six miles north of St Denis, down we came, with stout courage, I hope, upon the village of Écouen, and into immediate touch with that fortune that counselled us so amiably in the crisis of our affairs.
Yet at the outset this capricieuse essayed to terrify us out of all assurance of self-confidence, and was the coquette to give us a bad quarter of an hour before she smiled on our suit. For at the very barrier occurred a contretemps that, but for its happy adaptation by us to circumstance, threatened to put a short end to our fugitive romance.