Isaure blushed and faltered:
"What! do you think, monsieur, that the people in our mountains are not so hospitable as I am?"
"Hospitable! yes, indeed! But there are so many ways of being hospitable; and I see by your manner, by your speech—yes, yes, I know what I am talking about, and hereafter I think it would be difficult to deceive me.—Come, sit down here, and keep me company. I don’t frighten you, I trust?"
"No, monsieur," replied the girl timidly, as she seated herself a few steps from the table, taking care to keep Vaillant beside her.
After eating and drinking for some time, the stranger rested his elbows on the table, placed his head on his hands, and, gazing steadfastly at Isaure, said to her:
"People talk much about you in the neighborhood."
"About me, monsieur?"
"Yes, about you. The mountaineers declare that you are a witch."
"A witch?"
"Yes. That makes you smile and you are right; these idiots deserve nothing but pity; and yet in the old days such a reputation might have been most disastrous to you. In the days when people did not take the trouble to reason, they burned those who were accused of witchcraft; that was the quickest way. The goodwomen of those times did not doubt that witches rode to their revels on broomsticks; and there were people interested in having three-fourths of the human race become as foolish as the goodwomen. We have got beyond all that, and you will not be burned. But I begin to think that the peasants may well have been surprised at the difference between you and themselves, although I do not imagine that it is due to any but a perfectly natural cause. You will say that this is none of my business, I suppose; and that if you express yourself in better language than the mountaineers, it is, presumably, because your education was looked after. That is all very well; but you must agree, my child, that it was absurd to fit you for something better than tending goats, and then leave you in these mountains to follow that trade."