“Ah, good-day, Madame Barrau. Are you well? I perceive that you are charming as ever.” Blushing a little at this bold overture, Catherine answered quietly with a word. Firmin assumed such an offensive manner toward her that, obliged to treat it as insolence, she prepared to leave. Firmin, too, showed his intention to depart. “_Au revoir_,” said he. “Thanks for your advice, Monsieur.” Catherine, with disgust, turning to go, observed near the door old Jeannille, who was staring at her with cold, penetrating eyes. Catherine again changed color. “It seems as though she were playing the spy on me,” she thought. “Can it be that my husband has put a watch over me? If I knew that to be the fact----” Always impulsive, Catherine now imagined the worst. She fancied she had discovered a plot in which everybody was arrayed against her. “This is the third time I have caught that old hag watching me as if she would read my thoughts.” Firmin, meanwhile, was walking by her side. “Go away,” said Catherine disdainfully. “One would think you had taken it upon yourself to compromise me.” The man certainly was a sot, but he possessed an enormous amount of vanity. Catherine’s words therefore flattered his self-conceit. “Upon my honor, Madame----” Firmin for several years had served as valet to a Parisian gentleman, and he once had heard his master speak thus to a great lady. So thinking to please Catherine he made use of the high-sounding phrase, adding _sotto voce_ in her ear: “Meet me to-morrow at three o’clock at Bemacle’s Cross, _chère_ madame,” and without waiting for her reply he passed on ahead with rapid step. Catherine shrugged her shoulders. A feeling of indignation took possession of her. She redoubled her pace and proceeded home. Since the day when Savin humiliated her before the peasants she had been enraged and miserable. “On my knees,” she would repeat a dozen times a day, “he compelled me to ask pardon. On my knees!” And through her brain all sorts of schemes of vengeance were flitting. With all the force of her darker nature she had begun to hate the valiant soldier whose generosity she should have recognized and reciprocated. Haunted by the idea that ever since that memorable day people had distrusted her, she felt able less and less to strive against the evil spirit to which she had fallen a prey. On every side as she walked homeward an extraordinary confusion reigned. Many were engaged in a search after the missing cattle. The men taunted each other and quarrelled, and more than one peasant, after searching in vain for his cow, ox, or bull, took the one nearest him and declared without hesitation that it belonged to him. Nobody can be more ferocious than the peasant who loses his worldly goods, and in the present instance more than fifty had been dispossessed.