to the girl, and rode off followed by his train.
Agnelette was left alone with Thibault. We have related what Agnelette had done for Thibault’s sake, and also said that she was pretty.
Nevertheless, for all that, Thibault’s first thoughts on finding himself alone with the girl, were not for the one who had saved his life, but were given up to hatred and the contemplation of vengeance.
Thibault, as you see, had, since the morning, been making rapid strides along the path of evil.
“Ah! if the devil will but hear my prayer this time,” he cried, as he shook his fist, cursing the while, after the retiring huntsmen, who were just out of view, “if the devil will but hear me, you shall be paid back with usury for all you have made me suffer this day, that I swear.”
“Oh, how wicked it is of you to behave like that!” said Agnelette, going up to him.
“The Baron is a kind Lord, very good to the poor, and always gently behaved with women.”
“Quite so, and you shall see with what gratitude I will repay him for the blows he has given me.”
“Come now, frankly, friend, confess that you deserved those blows,” said the girl, laughing.
“So, so!” answered Thibault, “the Baron’s kiss has turned your head, has it, my pretty Agnelette?”
“You, I should have thought, would have been the last person to reproach me with that kiss, Monsieur Thibault. But what I have said, I say again; my Lord Baron was within his rights.”
“What, in belabouring me with blows!”
“Well, why do you go hunting on the estates of these great lords?”
“Does not the game belong to everybody, to the peasant just as much as to the great lords?”
“No, certainly not; the game is in their woods, it is fed on their grass, and you have no right to throw your boar-spear at a buck which belongs to my lord the Duke of Orleans.”
“And who told you that I threw a boar-spear at his buck?” replied Thibault, advancing towards Agnelette in an almost threatening manner.
“Who told me? why, my own eyes, which, let me tell you, do not lie. Yes, I saw you throw your boar-spear, when you were hidden there, behind the beech-tree.”
Thibault’s anger subsided at once before the straightforward attitude of the girl, whose truthfulness was in such contrast to his falsehood.
“Well, after all,” he said, “supposing a poor devil does once in a way help himself to a good dinner from the super-abundance of some great lord! Are you of the same mind, Mademoiselle Agnelette, as the judges who say that a man ought to be hanged just for a wretched rabbit? Come now, do you think God created that buck for the Baron more than for me?”
“God, Monsieur Thibault, has told us not to covet other men’s goods; obey the law of God, and you will not find yourself any the worse off for it!”
“Ah, I see, my pretty Agnelette, you know me then, since you call me so glibly by my name?”
“Certainly I do; I remember seeing you at Boursonnes, on the day of the fête; they called you the beautiful dancer, and stood round in a circle to watch you.”
Thibault, pleased with this compliment, was now quite disarmed.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered, “I remember now having seen you; and I think we danced together, did we not? but you were not so tall then as you are now, that’s why I did not recognise you at first, but I recall you distinctly now. And I remember too that you wore a pink frock, with a pretty little white bodice, and that we danced in the dairy. I wanted to kiss you, but you would not let me, for you said that it was only proper to kiss one’s vis-á-vis, and not one’s partner.”
“You have a good memory, Monsieur Thibault!”
“And do you know, Agnelette, that during these last twelve months, for it is a year since that dance, you have not only grown taller, but grown prettier too; I see you are one of those people who understand how to do two things at once.”
The girl blushed and lowered her eyes, and the blush and the shy embarrassment only made her look more charming still.
Thibault’s eyes were now turned towards her with more marked attention than before, and, in a voice, not wholly free from a slight agitation, he asked:
“Have you a lover, Agnelette?”
“No, Monsieur Thibault,” she answered, “I have never had one, and do not wish to have one.”
“And why is that? Is Cupid such a bad lad that you are afraid of him?”
“No, not that, but a lover is not at all what I want.”
“And what do you want?”
“A husband.”
Thibault made a movement, which Agnelette either did not, or pretended not to see.
“Yes,” she repeated, “a husband. Grandmother is old and infirm, and a lover would distract my attention too much from the care which I now give her; whereas, a husband, if I found a nice fellow who would like to marry me,—a husband would help me to look after her in her old age, and would share with me the task which God has laid upon me, of making her happy and comfortable in her last years.”
“But do you think your husband,” said Thibault, “would be willing that you should love your grandmother more than you loved him? and do you not think he might be jealous at seeing you lavish so much tenderness upon her?”
“Oh,” replied Agnelette, with an adorable smile, “there is no fear of that, for I will manage so as to let him have such a large share of my love and attention that he will have no cause to complain; the kinder and the more patient he is for the dear old thing, the more I shall devote myself to him, the harder shall I work that there may be nothing wanting to our little household. You see me looking small and delicate, and you doubt that I should have strength for this; but I have plenty of spirit and energy for work, and then, when the heart gives consent, one can work day and night without fatigue. Oh! how I should love the man who loved my grandmother! I promise you, that she, and my husband, and I, we should be three happy folks together.”
“You mean that you would be three very poor folks together, Agnelette!”
“And do you think the loves and friendships of the rich are worth a farthing more than those of the poor? At times, when I have been loving and caressing my grandmother, Monsieur Thibault, and she takes me on her lap and clasps me in her poor weak trembling arms, and puts her dear old wrinkled face against mine, and I feel my cheek wet with the loving tears she sheds, I begin to cry myself, and, I tell you, Monsieur Thibault, so soft and sweet are my tears, that there is no woman or girl, be she queen or princess, who has ever, I am sure, even in her happiest days, known such a real joy as mine. And, yet, there is no one in all the country round who is so destitute as we two are.”
Thibault listened to what Agnelette was saying without answering; his mind was occupied with many thoughts, such thoughts as are indulged in by the ambitious; but his dreams of ambition were disturbed at moments by
