"Come, Catherine," said Jean-Claude, "we've seen enough of it; there's no good in feasting your eyes on that!"
"You are right," said the old farm-mistress; "let us go: I should be tempted to go down among them to avenge myself single-handed."
The higher they ascended the mountain, the clearer and sharper grew the air. Louise, the true daughter of the Heimathslôs, with a little basket of provisions on her arm, was climbing the steep side at the head of the troop. The pale blue sky, the plains of Alsace and Lorraine, and, quite on the verge of the horizon, those of Champagne, all that boundless expanse stretching far as the eye could reach, excited in her breast feelings of the deepest enthusiasm. She seemed as if she had wings to skim the azure vault of heaven, like those great birds which sweep down from the tops of the trees to the abyss below uttering their cry of freedom. All the miseries of this lower world, all its injustices and its sufferings, were forgotten. In fancy Louise again saw herself just a little creature on the back of her mother, the poor strolling gipsy, and said to herself: "I was never more happy, never had less care, never laughed and sang so much! And yet we often wanted bread then. Ah! those were happy days!" And then snatches of old songs would come back to her mind.
At the approaches to the rock, which was of a reddish-brown, incrusted with large black and white pebbles, and inclining over the precipice like the arches of an immense cathedral, Louise and Catherine stopped in an ecstacy of surprise and delight at the scene that lay before them. Overhead, the firmament appeared to them still more spacious, the path cut in the rock still narrower. The valleys stretching away far out of sight, the endless woods, the distant lakes and pools of Lorraine, the narrow streamlet of the Rhine like a blue riband on their right. This grand spectacle touched them deeply, and the old farm-mistress said, with a sort of enthusiasm:
"Jean-Claude, He who has cut this rock that towers to the skies, who has hollowed out these valleys, who has planted the trees, the shrubs, and the mosses of the forest, He will render us the justice we deserve."
As they stood thus regarding the steep and lofty rock, Marc Divès led his horse into a cavern near at hand, then he returned, and beginning the ascent before them, he said to them:
"Take care; it is very slippery."
At the same time he pointed out to them, on their right, the blue precipice with the tops of the tall fir-trees at the bottom.
Every one became silent until they came to the terrace where the vault began. Arrived there, each one seemed to breathe more freely. They saw, about halfway, the smugglers, Brenn, Pfeifer, and Toubac, with their large gray cloaks, and black felt hats, sitting round a fire which seemed to extend the whole length of the rock. Marc Divès said to them:
"Here we are. The kaiserlicks have got the upper hand. Zimmer has been killed to-night. Is Hexe-Baizel up above there?"