"Try and see the caldron in which our fortune is cooking. You will tell me how it is done."
Off the two women started; a large, kind mother's heart full of tender love, and a sparrow's little gizzard, narrow and dry, without enough room in it for one pure tear. For a moment Sylvestre Ker stood on the threshold of the open door to watch them depart. On the gleaming white snow their two shadows fell—the one bent and already tottering, the other erect, flexible, and each step seemed a bound. The young lover sighed. Behind him, in a low voice, Pol Bihan said,—
"Ker, my comrade, I know what you are thinking about, and you are right to think so; this must come to an end. She is as impatient as you are, for her love equals yours; for both of you it is too long to wait."
Sylvestre Ker turned pale with joy.
"Do you speak truth?" he stammered. "Am I fortunate enough to be loved by her?"
"Yes, on my faith!" replied Pol Bihan; "she loves you too well for her own peace. When a girl laughs too much, it is to keep from weeping,—that's the real truth."
V.
Well might they call him "the fool," poor Sylvestre Ker! Not that he had less brains than another man,—on the contrary, he was now very learned—but love crazes him who places his affections on an unworthy object.