"You mock me, Jean-Claude."
"No; but to hear a woman of sound sense, of courage and determination, talk as you do, makes one indeed think of Yegof, who boasts that he has been living sixteen hundred years."
"Who knows?" said the old woman obstinately. "He may remember what others have forgotten."
Hullin proceeded to relate his conversation of the day before with Yegof, at the bivouac, thinking thus to disperse her gloom; but seeing that she was inclined to agree with the fool on the score of the sixteen centuries, the good man at length ceased, and paced the room with bowed head and anxious brow. "She is becoming mad," he thought; "another shock, and her mind is gone."
Catherine, after a silence, seemed about again to speak, when Louise tripped into the room, crying:
"Mamma Lefevre, Mamma Lefevre, a letter from Gaspard!"
Then the old woman, whose lips had been pressed tight together in her indignation at Hullin's ridicule, lifted her head, and the sharp lines of her face softened.
She took the letter and gazing at the red seal, said to the young girl:
"Kiss me, Louise; it bears good tidings."