"Yes; I have just arrived from Phalsbourg, and I have come to rest for a moment before going down to the village. Is Catherine in?" And as he spoke, the honest man appeared in the bright firelight, standing at the door, his broad-brimmed hat pushed back on to the nape of his neck, and his bundle of sheepskins on his shoulder. "Good night, my children," said he; "good night; always at work?" "Yes, Master Hullin, as you see," replied Jeanne, with a smile. "If one had nothing to do, life would be very tedious." "True, my pretty girl, true; there is nothing like work to give you those fresh cheeks and large bright eyes." Jeanne was going to reply when the inner door opened, and Catherine Lefévre entered, casting a searching look at Hullin as if to guess beforehand the news he brought. "Well, Jean-Claude, you are back again." "Yes, Catherine. There is both good and bad news." They went into the inner room, a high and spacious apartment, wainscoted to the very ceiling, with its cupboards of old oak with bright locks, its porcelain stove, its old clock marking the seconds in its walnut case, and its large arm-chair of embossed leather, which had been in use for ten generations. Jean-Claude never went into this room without thinking of Catherine's grandfather, whom he seemed still to see sitting in the shadow behind the stove. "Well!" inquired the farm-mistress, offering a seat to the sabot-maker, who had just placed his bundle on the table. "Well, of Gaspard, the news is good; the lad is well. He has seen some hardships--so much the better; that is the making of a young man; but for the rest, Catherine, everything is very bad. War! war!" He shook his head, and the old woman, with compressed lips, sat opposite to him, upright in her arm-chair, her eyes fixed, and listening eagerly. "So everything is going wrong; we shall have wars at our very doors?" "Yes, Catherine, from one day to the next we may expect to see the Allies in our mountains." "I dreaded as much. I was sure of it; but speak, Jean-Claude." Hullin then, with his elbows on his knees, his great red ears between his hands, and lowering his voice, began to relate all that he had seen: the defences round the town, the formation of batteries on the ramparts, the publication of the state of siege, the carts filled with the wounded in front of the church, his meeting with the old sergeant at the house of Wittman, and the renewal of the campaign. From time to time he made a pause, and the old farm-mistress would slowly wink her eyes, as though to fix the facts in her memory. When Jean-Claude came to the wounded, the good woman murmured, in a low voice, "Gaspard has escaped that." Then at the close of this dismal story there was a long silence, and they both looked at each other without uttering a word. What reflections, what bitter feelings passed through their minds! After a few moments the old woman strove to rouse herself from these thoughts.