“Saint Anne of Auray!” he exclaimed. Then he dropped his whip, clasped his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy. A faint color illuminated his coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap. “Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?” he muttered, in a voice so smothered that he alone heard it. “You _are_ fine,” he said, after a pause, using the curious word, “godaine,” a superlative in the dialect of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine clothes and beauty. “I daren’t touch you,” added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck and below her waist. “You had better not, Pierre,” replied Francine, inspired by the instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed. She drew back haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan’s surprise; but she compensated for the harshness of her words by the softness of her glance, saying, as she once more approached him: “Pierre, that lady was talking to you about my young mistress, wasn’t she?” Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between clouds and light. He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he had dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an attraction for him as the Breton girl herself. Then, as if to put a stop to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept silence. “Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,” resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and wished to relieve his scruples. Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly. To the Cottin girl that was answer enough. “Very good, Pierre,” she said; “if any evil happens to her, if a hair of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the last time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell.” The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to exorcise with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than Marche-a-Terre at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave it certainty. His glance, which at first had a character of savage tenderness, counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as love, suddenly became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the girl he had long since chosen. Francine interpreted his silence in her own way. “Won’t you do anything for my sake?” she said in a tone of reproach. At these words the Chouan cast a glance at his mistress from eyes that were black as a crow’s wing. “Are you free?” he asked in a growl that Francine alone could have understood.