Master Jean-Claude heard the fresh voice of Louise issuing orders in a little resolute tone that quite took him by surprise.
"Come, Come, Katel! let's be quick; it's near supper-time. We mustn't let our people be hungry. Since six o'clock this morning to have eaten nothing, and fighting hard all the while! We mustn't keep them waiting. Now then, Lesselé, come along, stir yourself—salt, pepper!"
Jean-Claude's heart leapt within him at the sound of this voice. He could not resist the pleasure of looking through the window for a moment before he went in. The kitchen was large, but rather low, and the walls were whitewashed. A large fire of beech-wood was blazing on the hearth, and encircling with its spiral columns of flame the black sides of an immense marmite (cauldron). The chimney-piece, very high and rather narrow, hardly sufficed to carry off the thick clouds of smoke that rose from the fire-place. The bright light served to clearly reveal the charming figure of Louise as she moved briskly about, coquettishly attired in a short petticoat, which afforded greater freedom to her limbs; her pretty face crimsoned in the ruddy glow; her bosom confined in a little bodice of red cloth, which displayed to perfection her sloping shoulders and graceful neck. There she was, in the very heat of action, going and coming, and tasting the dishes with her little bustling, housewifely air, trying the soup, approving and criticising. "A little more salt, a little of this, a little of that. Lesselé, won't you soon have finished plucking our great scraggy cock? At this rate, we shall never be ready."
It was really a charming sight to see her take the command thus. Hullin felt the tears come into his eyes. The two daughters of the Anabaptist; one, long, dry, and pale, with her large flat feet thrust into round shoes, her red hair tucked up under a little coif of black taffeta, her blue cotton gown descending in long folds to her heels; the other, fat and plump, who waddled like a goose, lifting her feet slowly one after the other, and balancing herself with her arms akimbo; these two honest girls formed the strangest contrast to Louise. The fat Katel went to and fro quite out of breath, without saying a word, while Lesselé, in an absent, dreamy way, did all by rule and compass.
The worthy Anabaptist himself, seated at the other end of the wash-house on a wooden chair, with his legs across, his head turned up, his cotton cap on the back of his head, and his hands in the pockets of his gaberdine, was watching everything with a look of astonishment, and saying from time to time, in a sententious voice: "Lesselé, Katel, do just as she bids you, my children; it will be a good lesson for you; you've not yet seen the world; you must get on quicker."
"Yes, yes; we must bustle about," Louise would rejoin; "what would become of us if we were to take months and weeks to consider about putting a little garlic in the sauce? You, Lesselé, you are the tallest; just reach me down that rope of onions from the ceiling."
And the tall girl instantly did as she was bid.
It was the proudest moment in Hullin's life. "How she orders the others about!" said he to himself; "he! he! he! she is a regular little hussar, a white-sergeant! I never suspected her of it."
And it was only at last, after five minutes' watching, that he made up his mind to go in.