"Yes."
"Good; then that is settled. I will set out early to-morrow. It is five leagues; about six o'clock I shall be back. You will see, Catherine, that your gloomy ideas are against all common sense."
"I hope so," replied the farm-mistress, rising; "I hope so. You have comforted me a little, Hullin. And now I will go back to the farm, and, I hope, sleep better than I did last night. Good night, Jean-Claude."
CHAPTER III.
On the morrow, at daybreak, Hullin, attired in his Sunday pantaloons of thick blue cloth, his ample brown velvet surcoat, his red waistcoat with metal buttons, and a broad-brimmed felt hat on his head, which, looped up in front like a cockade, exposed to view his rubicund face, set out on his way to Phalsbourg, with a stout walking-stick in his hand.
Phalsbourg is a little fortified place on the high road between Strasbourg and Paris. It commands the borders of Saverne, the defiles of the upper Barr, of Roche-Plate, of Bonne Fontaine, and of the Graufthal. Its bastions, its outworks, its half-moons, are carved in zig-zag on a rocky platform. At a distance, it seems as if you could clear the walls with a single stride; but, as you approach, you discover the ditch, which is a hundred feet broad and thirty feet deep, and the gloomy ramparts cut in the rock opposite. That brings you to a stand. For the rest, with the exception of the church, the commune hall, the two gates of France and Germany in form of a mitre, and the belfreys of the two powder-mills, all is hidden behind the glacis. Such is the little town of Phalsbourg, which is not wanting in a certain character of grandeur, especially when you cross its bridges, and enter beneath its low massive portals and bristling portcullises. In the interior, the houses are built at regular intervals; they are low, well-constructed buildings, built of hewn stone: everything about the place has a military look.