"I saw you go up just now," she said, drawing a stool to my side, "and here I am, come for a minute's talk with you."
With that she began such a string of questions about this one and that—in fact, about every one in our village—that I declare to you it was as much as I could do to answer the half of them. Every little while she would stop and look at me with such a tender air—we would have been there till this time, had not suddenly Mother Gréder Dick screamed from the bottom of the stairs:
"Annette, Annette, are you ever coming?"
"This minute, madame, this minute," cried the poor child, jumping up in a fright. She gave me a little pat on the cheek, and flew to the door. But, just as she was going out, she stopped.
"Ah!" she cried, turning back, "I forgot to tell you. Have you heard——?"
"What?"
"The death of our pro-recteur Zahn?"
"Well, what is that to us?"
"Ah, yes; but take care, sir, take care—if your papers are not all right! To-morrow morning, at eight o'clock, they will come to ask for them. They have arrested, oh! so many people during the last two weeks. The pro-recteur was assassinated yesterday evening, in the library, at the Cloister of Saint-Christophe. Last week the old priest, Ulmet Elias, who lived in the Jews' quarter, was killed in the same way. Only a few days before that they murdered the nurse, Christina Haas, and Seligmann, the agate-merchant of the Rue Durlach. So, my poor Kasper," she added, with a tender glance, "take good care of yourself, and be sure that your papers are all right."
All the while she was speaking, the cries below continued.