“Where have you sprung from, gadabout?” cried another voice.
Silvère, intoxicated with enthusiasm, had not thought of the distress which his sweetheart would feel at the jeers of the workmen. Miette, all confusion, looked at him as if to implore his aid. But before he could even open his lips another voice rose from the crowd, brutally exclaiming:
“Her father’s at the galleys; we don’t want the daughter of a thief and murderer amongst us.”
At this Miette turned dreadfully pale.
“You lie!” she muttered. “If my father did kill anybody, he never thieved!”
And as Silvère, pale and trembling more than she, began to clench his fists: “Stop!” she continued; “this is my affair.”
Then, turning to the men, she repeated with a shout: “You lie! You lie! He never stole a copper from anybody. You know it well enough. Why do you insult him when he can’t be here?”
She drew herself up, superb with indignation. With her ardent, half-wild nature she seemed to accept the charge of murder composedly enough, but that of theft exasperated her. They knew it, and that was why folks, from stupid malice, often cast the accusation in her face.
The man who had just called her father a thief was merely repeating what he had heard said for many years. The girl’s defiant attitude only incited the workmen to jeer the more. Silvère still had his fists clenched, and matters might have become serious if a poacher from the Seille, who had been sitting on a heap of stones at the roadside awaiting the order to march, had not come to the girl’s assistance.
“The little one’s right,” he said. “Chantegreil was one of us. I knew him. Nobody knows the real facts of his little matter. I always believed in the truth of his deposition before the judge. The gendarme whom he brought down with a bullet, while he was out shooting, was no doubt taking aim at him at the time. A man must defend himself! At all events Chantegreil was a decent fellow; he committed no robbery.”