"Brigitte!" said the countess, in a heart-rending tone, placing a chair before the table, as if to give a semblance of reality to her hopes, and so increase the strength of her illusions.
"Ah! madame, he will come. He is not far off. I haven't a doubt he is living, and on his way," replied Brigitte. "I put a key in the Bible, and I held it on my fingers while Cottin read a chapter in the gospel of Saint John; and, madame, the key never turned at all!"
"Is that a good sign?" asked the countess.
"Oh! madame, that's a well-known sign. I would wager my salvation, he still lives. God would not so deceive us."
"Ah! if he would only come—no matter for his danger here."
"Poor Monsieur Auguste!" cried Brigitte, "he must be toiling along the roads on foot."
"There's eight o'clock striking now," cried the countess, in terror.
She dared not stay away any longer from her guests; but before re-entering the salon, she paused a moment under the peristyle of the staircase, listening if any sound were breaking the silence of the street. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was standing sentinel at the door, and whose eyes seemed stupefied by the intensity of his attention to the murmurs of the street and night.
Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to play loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.
Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its soldiers immediately, and it was not an unusual thing to see the roads covered with recruits, who were still wearing citizen's dress. These young men either preceded or lagged behind their respective battalions, according to their power of enduring the fatigues of a long march.