"Oh! Lord, that is one o'clock striking. The others must be near Ercheviller; now I must leave you."
She rose and took her stick with a very important air.
"Well! bon voyage, Anna-Marie, don't make us wait so long next time."
"Ah! Mr. Goulden, if I do not sit every day at your table it is not my fault."
She laughed, and as she took up her bundle she said:
"Well, good-by, and for the kindness you have shown me I will pray the blessed Saint Quirin to send you a fine fat boy as fresh and rosy as a lady-apple. That is the best thing, Madame Bertha, that an old woman like me can do for you."
On hearing these good wishes, I said, "That old woman is a good soul. There is nothing I so much wish for in the world. May God hear her prayer!" I was touched by that good wish.
She went downstairs, and as she shut the door, Catherine began to laugh, and said:
"She emptied her budget this time."
"Yes, my children," replied Mr. Goulden, who was quite grave, "that is what we may call human ignorance. You would believe that poor creature had invented all that, but she has picked it up right and left, it is word for word what those émigrés think, and what they repeat every day in their journals, and what the preachers say every day openly in all the churches. Louis XVIII. troubles them, he has too much good sense for them, but the real king is Monseigneur the Duke d'Artois, who wants to secure his salvation, and in order that this may be done everything must be put back where it was before the 'rebellion of twenty-five years,' and all the national property must be given up to its ancient owners, and the nobles must have their rights and privileges as in 1788; they must occupy all the grades of the army, and the Catholic religion must be the only religion in the state. The Sabbath and fête days must be observed, and heretics driven from all the offices, and the priests alone have the right to instruct the children of the people, and this great and terrible country, which carried its ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity everywhere by means of its good sense and its victories, and which never would have been vanquished if the Emperor had not made an alliance with the kings at Tilsit, this nation, which in a few years produced so many more great captains and orators, learned men and geniuses of all kinds, than the noble races produced in a thousand years, must surrender everything and go back to tilling the earth, while the others, who are not one in a thousand, will go on from father to son, taking everything and gladdening their hearts at the expense of the people! Oh! no doubt the fields and meadows and ponds will be given up as Anna-Marie said, and that the convents will be rebuilt in order to please Mons. le Comte d'Artois and help him to gain his salvation—that is the least the country could do for so great a prince!"