She was silent anew; a long while yet she listened; but the vision was gone. Seconds succeeded to seconds, slow as centuries, when suddenly Hexe-Baizel began to say, in a sharp voice: "She is mad! she has seen nothing. Marc, I know him. He is laughing finely at us. What is it to him if we perish? Provided he has his bottle of wine and chitterlings, and can smoke his pipe quietly in the chimney-corner, it's all the same to him. Ah! the wretch!" Then all relapsed into silence, and the unfortunates, a moment revived by the hope of a near deliverance, fell back again into despair. "It is a dream," thought they; "Hexe-Baizel is right; we are condemned to die of hunger." In the meantime, night was come. When the moon rose behind the tall fir-trees, casting her pale rays on the sorrowful groups of the besieged, Hullin only was still watching, though burnt up with fever. He heard far, very far off in the gorges the voices of the German sentinels calling out "_Wer dà! Wer dà!_" the camp patrols going their rounds through the woods, the shrill neighing of the horses at picket, their stamping, and the shouts of their keepers. Towards midnight the brave man ended, however, by going to sleep like the rest. When he awoke, the village clock of Charmes was striking four. Hullin, at the sound of its distant vibrations, aroused himself from his stupor; he opened his eyelids, and as he was looking round, in a sort of bewildered manner, striving to recover his faculties, the dim light of a torch passed before his eyes; a fear came over him, and he said to himself:--"Am I going mad? The night is quite dark, and yet I see torches." And yet the flame re-appeared; he regarded it more closely, then rose abruptly, pressing for a few seconds his hand against his contracted face. Then, hazarding another look, he saw distinctly a fire on the Giromani, on the other side of the Blanru; a fire which swept the heavens with its purple wing, and flickered among the shadows of the fir-trees on the snow. And, recollecting that this signal had been agreed on between himself and Piorette to announce an attack, he began to tremble from head to foot; cold drops of sweat stood on his face, and walking on tiptoe through the darkness, like a blind man, with outstretched hands, he stammered: "Catherine! Louise! Jerôme!" But no one replied to him, and after having groped about in this way, thinking he was walking, while in reality he was not taking a single step, the unhappy man fell back, exclaiming: "My children! Catherine! They come! We are saved!" Immediately there was heard a vague murmur; it seemed as if the dead were re-awakening. There was a burst of dry laughter; it was Hexe-Baizel, gone mad from suffering. Then Catherine exclaimed: "Hullin! Hullin! Who spoke?" Jean-Claude, recovered from his emotion, exclaimed, in a firmer tone: