“Here is a madman!” said the peasant to himself, sending the children into the hut; “nevertheless, I must not let him go without having told him the danger to which he exposes himself. For sixty years, my young traveller, I have inhabited this cottage. Not one of those who have put to me the question that you have just asked me has ever returned. At first, the people who travelled along this road came singly; careless, gay, foolish as you, they passed singing before my door: the same evening they were the captives of Fear. When it was found that there was danger in the voyage, there was quite a different sort of procession. Man spends his life in neglecting Heaven and courting death. When Death scowls at him, he believes it is smiling. The procession never returned. Gallant warriors came, and said to me, ‘Prepare a breakfast for us to-morrow, good man; on our return we will make great cheer, and tell you our adventures, and laugh over them.’ And the feast was wasted for want of guests; and so, later, when reason increased in my brain, as my beard grew on my chin, I made people pay in advance, but I made no preparations for their return. Then came troops of warriors fully armed, amid the flourish of trumpets, and with banners floating on the wind. They pillaged my house, and their horses wasted my crops. Fear made them captives like the others, and from that time I have lived alone in my ruined habitation, which no one dares to approach. I lost my father through his rashness, my wife through her curiosity; she left me these children. One of them wandered away one day when I was in the fields; what happened to him I have never known; he came back to me an idiot. I have never quitted this spot, though it is more like a burial-place than a birth-place. I am a solitary dweller on the frontiers of Death, an advanced outpost, crying to all such foolish people as you to turn back.” “I thank you,” answered Mitaine; “but if you had known me, you would have taken care not to tell me this history, for it only redoubles my desire to meet this dreadful tyrant.” The peasant raised his arms to Heaven, as if to call it to witness the efforts he had made; then he again sat down before his ruined cabin. “You must be poor,” said Mitaine, feeling in her purse. “Take this; you will be my heir if I die, which does not appear to me quite so certain. In any case, the money is yours. Pass the night in prayers for my success, and in the meantime point out to me the road that I must follow.” The peasant rose, took Mitaine by the hand, and climbed with her a naked height which overlooked the country. [Illustration: 209] “You see that footpath which borders the forest? That you must follow. Whither it leads no one knows. Heaven be with you! Farewell!”