She smote the wood more loudly, and called to him again.
A heavy step echoed on the mud floor within; a match was struck, a dull light glimmered; a voice she did not know muttered drowsily, "Who is there?"
"It is I, Marcellin," she answered. "It is not night. I am come to be an hour with you. Is anything amiss?"
The door opened slowly, an old woman, whose face was strange to her, peered out into the dusk. She had been asleep on the settle by the fire, and stared stupidly at the flame of her own lamp.
"Is it the old man, Marcellin, you want?" she asked.
"Marcellin, yes—where is he?"
"He died four days ago. Get you gone; I will have no tramps about my place."
"Died!"
Folle-Farine stood erect and without a quiver in her face and in her limbs; but her teeth shut together like a steel clasp, and all the rich and golden hues of her skin changed to a sickly ashen pallor.
"Yes, why not?" grumbled the old woman. "To be sure, men said that God would never let him die, because he killed St. Louis; but I myself never thought that. I knew the devil would not wait more than a hundred years for him—you can never cheat the devil, and he always seems stronger than the saints—somehow. You are that thing of Yprès, are you not? Get you gone!"