'Melusine?' asked Charlie, with surprise. 'Who is she?'
'Don't you know, monsieur? Have you never heard of the "Cris de Melusine?"'
'Never.'
'It is an old legend believed in by most of our peasantry. Brantôme says she is a spirit that haunts the old castle of Lusignan, where, by loud shrieks, she announces any disasters that are to befall France.'
'She must have been shrieking pretty loud and long of late,' said Charlie, smiling at the earnestness of the girl, who, in her love of the legendary, reminded him, he thought, of Ernestine, and he liked her the better for it.
So Charlie continued to be attended daily by the young Doctor Guerrand, and nursed by Célandine in secret, as it would have been perilous for Charlie had the exasperated peasantry learned that a Prussian officer was concealed in the chateau. The heart of the young French doctor Guerrand was full of bitterness for the disgrace that was falling on his country, and, were it not that by his practice he supported an aged mother, he would have cast aside the lancet and betaken to the chassepot.
'Sacre!' said he, on one occasion, to Charlie; 'in this war the French seem to make more use of their feet than their hands; but we won't talk of politics.'
'Why, Doctor?'
'Because I always lose my temper. I am a Republican now. I have become so in the bitterness of my heart. But, thank Heaven, we shall soon be rid of our Emperor, as you will, ere long, of your Kaiser; for what are kings, emperors, and princes, but a crowned confederacy against the freedom of the world? Sacre!'
And the young Republican ground his teeth in his fierce energy.