"You will not expect me very soon, my child: I have a good distance to go, so do not be anxious about me. If anyone asks you where I am gone, you can say, 'To Cousin Mathias's, at Saverne.'"
"Won't you have your breakfast before you go?"
"No! I've put a crust of bread, and a little flask of brandy, in my pocket. Farewell, my child. Be happy. Dream of Gaspard."
And, without waiting for fresh questions, he took his stick, and quitted the house, directing his steps towards the hill of the Bouleaux,[6] to the left of the village. After about a quarter of an hour's brisk walking, he had passed it, and gained the footpath of the Three Fountains, which winds round by Falkenstein, with which a low stone wall runs parallel.
The first snows of winter, which are never long able to resist the damp of the valleys, were already beginning to melt away, and trickled slowly down the footpath. Hullin mounted the wall to make his footing surer, and as he chanced, by accident, to cast his eyes down on the village, at a distance of within two gun-shots, he saw the housewives busily engaged in sweeping the snow away from the front of their houses, whilst some old men, standing by, wished them good morning as they smoked their first pipe in their doorways. This profound calm, in presence of the thoughts that were stirring within him, moved him deeply; he continued on his way in a thoughtful mood, saying to himself: "How quietly and tranquilly their life flows on! They have no doubts and fears for the future; and yet, but a few days, and what clamour, what strife, may rend the air!"
As the first thing necessary was to procure the powder, Catherine Lefévre had very naturally cast her eyes upon Marc Divès, the smuggler, and his virtuous spouse, Hexe-Baizel.
These people lived on the other side of the Falkenstein, under the very shadow of the old ruinous burg. They had hollowed out for themselves in the rock a very convenient cavern which had only one entrance, and two apertures to admit light; but which, if report spoke true, had another outlet, leading to old subterranean passages of great extent. This the custom-house officers had never been able to discover, in spite of numberless visits paid with that object in view. Jean-Claude and Marc Divès had known each other from childhood—had rambled together as boys in search of hawks' and owls' nests, and, in after life, they met each other at least once nearly every week, at the great sawpits of the Valtin. Jean-Claude, therefore, believed himself sure of the smuggler, but he was not quite so certain of Madame Hexe-Baizel, a very discreet person, and who would not, perhaps, be greatly taken with the prospect of strife and warfare. "At any rate," said he, as he jogged steadily along, "we shall soon see."
He had lit his pipe, and from time to time he turned slowly round to gaze upon the broad landscape, whose limits kept growing wider and wider.
Nothing more beautiful in nature than these wooded mountains, rising one above the other in the pale heavens—these vast plains, stretching out of sight, all white with snow—these black ravines, half hidden among the woods, with their sluggish streams gurgling slowly over the smooth pebbles at the bottom.
And then the silence—that grand solemn silence of winter—the half-melted snow falling noiselessly from the tops of the tall firs on to the lower branches, gently bending beneath their weight; the birds of prey whirling in pairs over the forest, uttering their shrill war-cry. All this must be seen, for it cannot be described!