Louise loved the fields, the gardens, and the flowers. In spring she eagerly listened for the first notes of the lark, or sought the bluebells beneath the bushes, or watched for the return of the sparrows to the corners of the windows on the roof. She was ever the child of the wandering gypsies, only a little less wild than they; but Hullin forgave everything; he understood her nature, and often cried, laughing:
"My poor Louise, with the booty you bring us—your bunches of flowers and little birds—we should all die of hunger in a week."
But she would only smile, and he, as he returned to his work, exclaim:
"Bah! why should I scold? She is right to love the sunlight, and Gaspard will labor for both!"
So reasoned the good man, and days, weeks, and months rolled by in patient waiting for Gaspard's return.
But Gaspard returned not, and now for two months they had had no tidings of him.
One day, toward the middle of December, 1813, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, Hullin, bent over his work-bench, was finishing a pair of spiked sabots for Rochart, the wood-cutter. Louise had placed her flowers near the little stove which crackled on the hearth, while the monotonous tick-tack of the old village clock marked the seconds as they flew, and occasionally the tramp of clogs upon the frozen earth was heard without, and a head covered with a hat or wrapped in a hood passed the window. At length, Hullin, glancing through the panes of the window, suddenly stopped his labor, and stood with both eyes wide open, as one gazing at some unusual sight.
At the corner of the street, just opposite the tavern of the Three Pigeons, a strange figure was advancing, surrounded by a crowd of jumping, laughing boys, each vying with the other in shouting at the top of his voice: "King of Diamonds! King of Diamonds!" In truth, a stranger figure could scarcely be imagined. Fancy a man with a grave face and red beard; a gloomy eye, straight nose, eyebrows meeting, a circlet of tin upon his head, an iron-gray shepherd dog-skin flapping upon his back, the two fore-paws knotted around his neck; his breast covered with little copper crosses, his legs with a sort of gray stuff trousers, and his feet bare. A large raven with lustrous black wings was perched upon his shoulder. One might think, from the majesty of his air and gait, that an ancient Merovingian king had come back to earth; and, indeed, he carried a short stick cut to the shape of a sceptre, while with his right hand he gesticulated magnificently, pointing to the skies and apostrophizing his attendants.
Every door opened as he passed, and curious faces were pressed against every window-pane. A few old women upon the outside stairs of their cottages called to him, but he deigned no reply; others descended to the street and would have barred his passage, but he, with head erect and brows haughtily raised, waved them aside.