She meant, no doubt, that Miette had plenty of time before her to suffer and weep. Then, turning her eyes upon Silvère, who with a glance of ecstasy had followed the child as she ran off in the bright sunshine, she simply added: “Take care, my boy; this sort of thing sometimes kills one.”
These were the only words she spoke with reference to the incident which had awakened all the sorrows that lay slumbering in the depths of her being. Silence had become a real religion with her. When Silvère came in, she double-locked the door, and threw the key down the well. In this wise she felt certain that the door would no longer make her an accomplice. She examined it for a moment, glad at seeing it reassume its usual gloomy, barrier-like aspect. The tomb was closed once more; the white gap was for ever boarded up with that damp-stained mossy timber over which the snails had shed silvery tears.
In the evening, aunt Dide had another of those nervous attacks which came upon her at intervals. At these times she would often talk aloud and ramble incoherently, as though she was suffering from nightmare. That evening, while Silvère held her down on her bed, he heard her stammer in a panting voice such words as “custom-house officer,” “fire,” and “murder.” And she struggled, and begged for mercy, and dreamed aloud of vengeance. At last, as always happened when the attack was drawing to a close, she fell into a strange fright, her teeth chattering, while her limbs quivered with abject terror. Finally, after raising herself into a sitting posture, she cast a haggard look of astonishment at one and another corner of the room, and then fell back upon the pillow, heaving deep sighs. She was, doubtless, a prey to some hallucination. However, she drew Silvère to her bosom, and seemed to some degree to recognise him, though ever and anon she confused him with someone else.
“There they are!” she stammered. “Do you see? They are going to take you, they will kill you again. I don’t want them to—Send them away, tell them I won’t; tell them they are hurting me, staring at me like that—”
Then she turned to the wall, to avoid seeing the people of whom she was talking. And after an interval of silence, she continued: “You are near me, my child, aren’t you? You must not leave me. I thought I was going to die just now. We did wrong to make an opening in the wall. I have suffered ever since. I was certain that door would bring us further misfortune—Oh! the innocent darlings, what sorrow! They will kill them as well, they will be shot down like dogs.”
Then she relapsed into catalepsy; she was no longer even aware of Silvère’s presence. Suddenly, however, she sat up, and gazed at the foot of her bed, with a fearful expression of terror.
“Why didn’t you send them away?” she cried, hiding her white head against the young man’s breast. “They are still there. The one with the gun is making signs that he is going to fire.”
Shortly afterwards she fell into the heavy slumber that usually terminated these attacks. On the next day, she seemed to have forgotten everything. She never again spoke to Silvère of the morning on which she had found him with a sweetheart behind the wall.
The young people did not see each other for a couple of days. When Miette ventured to return to the well, they resolved not to recommence the pranks which had upset aunt Dide. However, the meeting which had been so strangely interrupted had filled them with a keen desire to meet again in some happy solitude. Weary of the delights afforded by the well, and unwilling to vex aunt Dide by seeing Miette again on the other side of the wall, Silvère begged the girl to meet him somewhere else. She required but little pressing; she received the proposal with the willing smile of a frolicsome lass who has no thought of evil. What made her smile was the idea of outwitting that spy of a Justin. When the lovers had come to agreement, they discussed at length the choice of a favourable spot. Silvère proposed the most impossible trysting-places. He planned regular journeys, and even suggested meeting the young girl at midnight in the barns of the Jas-Meiffren. Miette, who was much more practical, shrugged her shoulders, declaring she would try to think of some spot. On the morrow, she tarried but a minute at the well, just time enough to smile at Silvère and tell him to be at the far end of the Aire Saint-Mittre at about ten o’clock in the evening. One may be sure that the young man was punctual. All day long Miette’s choice had puzzled him, and his curiosity increased when he found himself in the narrow lane formed by the piles of planks at the end of the plot of ground. “She will come this way,” he said to himself, looking along the road to Nice. But he suddenly heard a loud shaking of boughs behind the wall, and saw a laughing head, with tumbled hair, appear above the coping, whilst a joyous voice called out: “It’s me!”
And it was, in fact, Miette, who had climbed like an urchin up one of the mulberry-trees, which even nowadays still border the boundary of the Jas-Meiffren. In a couple of leaps she reached the tombstone, half buried in the corner at the end of the lane. Silvère watched her descend with delight and surprise, without even thinking of helping her. As soon as she had alighted, however, he took both her hands in his, and said: “How nimble you are!—you climb better than I do.”