"Do not count on that," interrupted the old woman. "Marc may be taken or killed by the Germans: and, if not, and suppose he manages to cross their lines, how will he be able to enter Phalsbourg? You well know that the town is besieged by the Russians." Then everybody relapsed into silence. Hexe-Baizel brought up the soup, and they sat in a circle round the smoking bowl. CHAPTER XXIV A FLAG OF TRUCE Catherine Lefèvre came out of the ancient ruin about seven in the morning; Louise and Hexe-Baizel were still asleep; but broad daylight, the clear light of the high regions, was already penetrating the abysses. In the depths, through the azure, the woods, valleys, and rocks could be clearly traced, like the mosses and pebbles of a lake beneath the blue crystal water. Not a breath disturbed the air; and Catherine, gazing over this grand spectacle, felt a calmness and tranquillity beyond even that which comes of sleep. "What are our miseries of a day," thought she, "our uneasinesses and our sufferings? Why pester heaven with our moans? why fear the future? All this lasts but a second; our sighs are of no more avail than the chirp of the grasshopper in autumn; and do its cries prevent winter from coming? Must not time pursue its course, and everything die to be renewed?" Thus thought the old dame, and she had no longer any fears for the future. She had been thus musing for a few instants, when suddenly a hum of voices struck her ears: she turned, and saw Hullin with the three smugglers, talking seriously together on the other side of the plateau. They were engaged in a grave discussion, and had not noticed her. Catherine approached closer to them, and heard the following conversation:-- "Then you do not think it possible for any one to get down either side?" "No, Jean-Claude, it is quite impossible," replied Brenn; "those brigands know the country thoroughly well: all the paths are guarded. Hold, look along the paths of that stream: we never dreamt of observing it even; well! they are defending that now. And over there, on the passage of the Rothstein, a path only for a goat, which is not trodden once in ten years--thou canst see a bayonet sparkle behind the rock, canst thou not? And that nearer path along which I have slipped with my bags for these eight years past without meeting a single gendarme, they occupy that also: the devil certainly must have showed them all the defiles." "Yes," exclaimed Joubac, "if the devil has nothing to do with it, at least Yégof has!" "But," continued Hullin, "it seems to me that three or four men might, if they liked, push through one of those posts." "No, those posts lean one on the other; at the first shot one would have a whole regiment upon one's shoulders," replied Brenn. "Besides, supposing one had the luck to get through, how could one return with provisions? My opinion is, that it is impossible." There was a pause.