"Yes, the same as at the farm of Bois-de-Chênes." And getting animated, she continued, in an almost angry tone, "You may say what you like, Jean-Claude, but a great danger menaces us. Yes, yes! you don't see any sense in all this; but it was not a dream, it was like an old tale which comes back to one: something one sees in sleep and remembers. Listen! We were as we are now, after a great victory—in some place—I don't know where—in a sort of large wooden shed, with beams across it, and palisades around. We were not thinking of anything: all the faces I saw I knew: you were among them, Marc Divès, Duchêne, and old men already dead: my father and old Hugues Rochart of Harberg, the uncle of him who has just died: and they all had coarse gray cloth blouses, with long beards and bare necks. We had won a like victory, and were drinking out of red earthenware pots, when a cry arose: 'The enemy is coming!' And Yégof, on horseback, with his long beard and pointed crown, an axe in his hand, and with his eyes gleaming like a wolf's, appeared before me in the darkness. I rushed on him with a club, he waited for me—and from that moment I saw no more. I only felt a great pain in my neck; a cold wind passed over my face, and my head seemed to be dangling at the end of a cord: it was that wretched Yégof who had hung my head to his saddle and was galloping away!"
There was a short pause; and then Jean-Claude, rousing from his stupor, replied: "It is a dream. I also have had dreams. Yesterday you were agitated, Catherine, by all that tumult, that noise."
"No," she exclaimed in a firm tone, taking up her task again: "no, it was not that. And to tell you the truth, during the battle, and even when, the cannons were thundering against us, I was not afraid; I was certain beforehand that we should not be beaten; I had seen it long ago. But now I am afraid."
"But the Germans have evacuated Schirmeck; the whole line of the Vosges is defended. We have more men than we need; they are coming every minute in great numbers."
"No matter."
Hullin shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, come! you are feverish, Catherine; try to be calm, and think of pleasanter things. As for all these dreams, you see, I make no more account of them than I do of the Grand Turk, with his pipe and blue stockings. The chief thing is to keep a good look-out, and to have plenty of ammunition, men, and guns: that is infinitely better than the most rose-colored dreams."
"You are mocking me, Jean-Claude."
"No; but to hear a sensible, courageous woman speak as you do, reminds one in spite of himself of Yégof, who pretends to have lived sixteen hundred years ago."
"Who knows?" said the old woman, in an obstinate tone; "it is possible he may remember what others have forgotten."