The peasants also began to fear that Adeline was ill. Sans-Souci said nothing, but he was more anxious than the rest, for he remembered what he had told Adeline that morning, and he suspected that she had done something on impulse. They all impatiently awaited Jacques’s return. He came down at last, but grief and melancholy were expressed on his features, his eyes were moist and his brow was dark. “What has happened?” cried the peasants. “She has gone, she has left us,” said Jacques, pacing the floor, raising his eyes to the ceiling, clenching his fists, and pausing now and then to stamp the floor violently. “She has gone!” repeated the whole family sadly. “Oh! that ain’t possible,” said Guillot. “Here, read this;” and Jacques threw down in front of the farmer the paper that Adeline had left. Guillot took it and gazed at it earnestly for some moments. “Well!” said Sans-Souci, walking toward him, “what does she say?” “You see, I don’t know how to read,” replied Guillot, still staring at the paper. Sans-Souci snatched it from his hands and read it aloud. “You see she tells us not to be worried about her absence,” said Louise; “she will come back soon, I’m sure.” “Oh! so far as that goes, I will answer for it too,” said Guillot; “she wouldn’t leave us without saying good-bye to us, that’s sure!” Sans-Souci agreed with the peasants, and he tried to comfort his friend. “But where has she gone?” said Jacques. “Why this sudden departure? She didn’t seem to have any idea of it yesterday; and for a young woman, weak as she is, to travel with a child that has to be carried--She will make herself sick. Ah! she must have had some news from Paris. Ten thousand bayonets! If I knew that anything had been kept from me----” As he said this, Jacques’s eyes turned toward Sans-Souci, who looked at the floor, twisted his moustache and utterly failed to conceal his embarrassment. “Come, come, Brother Jacques, let us wait before we lose hope,” said the farmer’s wife, urging the honest plowman to go to bed; “perhaps she will be back to-morrow.” “Yes,” said Guillot, “and we will have a famous soup to celebrate, and we will drink some of last year’s wine, which is beginning to be just right.” Sans-Souci dared not say anything; he was afraid of becoming confused and betraying himself; his comrade’s glances closed his mouth. “I will wait a few days,” said Jacques; “but if she doesn’t come back, then I will go to find her, even if I have to go to the end of the world.”