She cast her eyes up and made a movement with her hand. One of the charming things about her was the way she could speak without speaking, just by a gesture, a glance, she could tell things that would take many words to say. Her up-cast eyes and the movement she made with her hand told the character of the Captain without speech.
She nodded towards the long grass where the rat had disappeared: “He hides amidst the canes, he kills the little birds that cannot yet fly, he comes to the henroosts of the poor people and kills the little chickens—egg-sucker—ahn—of all things the meanest. Once—” said Marie, leaving description for romance “a fer de lance bit him.”
“Did he die?”
“No, it was the fer de lance who died.” She laughed. Voltaire, sitting in his study at Ferney had once made the same jest about the man who poisoned the snake. Goldsmith used the same idea with a dog for the chief protagonist of his story. She had never heard of Voltaire or Goldsmith—she just wanted to describe Sagesse.
Then she rose to her feet and pointed to her shadow strewn away down the road, then to the sun nearing the mountain tops. It was time to be going, and Gaspard, rising, helped her to lift the heavy tray to her head.
Already it was cooler, the great haze of afternoon light had faded and distant things were becoming definite, the sun was fast approaching the mountains.
“You know this Sagesse—” said Gaspard as he walked beside her, “well I know him too. I am going with him soon on a voyage.”
She stopped and turned, facing him fully. “Going with him—a voyage.”
“Not far—I will return.”
“Going with him—ah, you are going with him—”