The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung over the house now. There was a feeble flicker of lightning and a faint crash, far away.
The old woman gave her niece a little shake. “Dreams are nothing,” she said. “You are awake now....” And indeed Catherine thought that no dream could be so bad as the realities which kept hold of one through the long waking hours.
“They were killing him,” moaned Arlette, beginning to tremble and struggle in her aunt’s arms. “I tell you they were killing him.”
“Be quiet. Were you dreaming of Peyrol?”
She became still in a moment and then whispered: “No, Eugène.”
She had seen Réal set upon by a mob of men and women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light, in front of a stretch of mere shells of houses with cracked walls and broken windows, and going down in the midst of a forest of raised arms brandishing sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man flourishing a red rag on a stick, while another was beating a drum which boomed above the sickening sound of broken glass falling like rain on the pavement. And away round the corner of an empty street came Peyrol, whom she recognized by his white head, walking without haste, swinging his cudgel regularly. The terrible thing was that Peyrol looked straight at her, not noticing anything, composed, without a frown or a smile, unseeing and deaf, while she waved her arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She woke up with the piercing sound of his name in her ears and with the impression of the dream so powerful that even now, looking distractedly into her aunt’s face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous crowd raised above Réal’s sinking head. Yet the name that had sprung to her lips on waking was the name of Peyrol. She pushed her aunt away with such force that the old woman staggered backwards, and to save herself had to catch hold of the overmantel above her head. Arlette ran to the door of the salle, looked in, came back to her aunt and shouted: “Where is he?”
Catherine really did not know which path the lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that “he” meant Réal.
She said: “He went away a long time ago”; grasped her niece’s arm and added with an effort to steady her voice: “He is coming back, Arlette—for nothing will keep him away from you.”
Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself the magic name, “Peyrol, Peyrol!” then cried: “I want Eugène now. This moment.”
Catherine’s face wore a look of unflinching patience. “He has departed on service,” she said. Her niece looked at her with enormous eyes, coal-black, profound, and immovable, while in a forcible and distracted tone she said: “You and Peyrol have been plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how to make that old man give him up. He is mine!” She spun round wildly, like a person looking for a way of escape from a deadly peril, and rushed out blindly.