All this bustle and movement produced a strange effect upon me, and I could not yet realize that I must quit the city. As I was thus in the greatest distress, the door opened and Catharine entered weeping, while Mother Grédel cried out:
"I told you you should have fled to Switzerland; that these rogues would finish by carrying you off. I told you so, and you would not believe me."
"Mother Grédel," replied Monsieur Goulden, "to go to do his duty is not so great an evil as to be despised by honest people. Instead of all these cries and reproaches, which serve no good purpose, you would do better to comfort and encourage Joseph."
"Ah!" said she; "I do not reproach him, although this is terrible."
Catharine did not leave me; she sat by me and we embraced each other, and she said, pressing my arm:
"You will return?"
"Yes, yes," said I, in a low voice. "And you—you will always think of me; you will not love another?"
She answered, sobbing:
"No, no! I will never love any but you."
This lasted a quarter of an hour, when the door opened and Captain Vidal entered, his cloak rolled like a hunting-horn over his shoulder.