He took her in his arms and pressed his cheek against hers. "What a foolish little girl it is to talk like that! Of course you'll be alive, and you'll be even better and stronger and happier than you are now. And then think of all the good times you'll have this summer with Jeanne and Louise and your mother and Monsieur Berthier. We'll have _fêtes_ for the girls at our house, and every day we'll go to see your mother. You don't think she'll be too proud to receive us, do you, now that she's rich and important? I suppose she's the queen of Boulogne, with her carriages and her horses and her servants. She'll soon be getting a husband for Jeanne, some fine young fellow with a lot of money. And won't Jeanne put him through his paces? She's a high-stepper, that Jeanne, and I should pity the man who got her and didn't understand her. Think of trying to keep Jeanne down!" In her moments of depression he always spoke to her like that, and for the time it cheered her; but when the spring came, she drooped visibly, and Jules became alarmed; sometimes she would have attacks of convulsive weeping, and these would be followed by hours of profound sadness, during which she spoke scarcely a word. There were other days when she would be full of courage and hope, gayer than she had ever been; then they would drive into the country and she would take deep draughts of the fresh spring air, and her eyes would brighten and her cheeks flush. In spite of his anxiety, these days were very happy for Jules; the thought that he might lose her made her dearer to him. Sometimes he would take her hand and tell her that without her he couldn't live; she had made him realize how wretched his existence had been before marriage; he could not go back to that again. Then she would rest her head on his shoulder and whisper that she would try to be brave. Her sufferings seemed to be wholly in her mind; the doctor Jules consulted said that, bodily, she was perfectly strong, and could easily fill her engagement at the circus; her work in the ring had given her a remarkable development of the muscles and the chest; if she stopped the work now, and ceased to practise, she would suffer from the inaction. Jules, however, felt relieved when the fifteenth of April came, and they were able to leave Vienna for Paris. There they remained only a day, for they were eager to reach Boulogne and the little home that Madame Berthier had arranged for them, in the house where Blanche had been born, and had passed the few weeks in each year when she was not travelling. When they arrived, early in the afternoon, Madame Berthier and the girls, together with Berthier, were at the station to meet them, and they received a rapturous greeting, the girls clinging to their sister with frantic embraces.