Grédel drooped her eyes, and murmured, in a timid voice—
“You’re laughing at me, Coucou Peter—I know you are—you’re laughing at me!”
“Laughing! laughing!—say rather crying, my pretty Grédel. Ah! if I were still only twenty, as I said before, then indeed I would laugh, Grédel!”
For a moment he remained silent, with a melancholy air: then he turned towards Mathéus, who was blushing up to his eyes, and cried—
“That reminds me, Doctor Frantz—where the deuce are you off to so early in the morning? You must have started at daybreak to be over here before noon.”
“I am going to preach my doctrine,” replied Mathéus, in an ingenuous and natural tone.
“Your doctrine!” cried Coucou Peter, opening his big eyes; “your doctrine!”
For a few seconds he remained wondering; but presently, bursting into a roar of laughter, he cried—
“Ha! ha! ha! that’s a good joke—a good joke! Ha! ha! ha! Doctor Frantz, I should never have thought you were so funny!”