Courtin bit his lips and made no reply to Joseph, while to himself he said, as he knocked at the door of the other Picaut:-- "How came that fool of a Pascal to tell his rascally brother it was I who sent him on that errand? Upon my soul, one can't do anything in these parts without everybody gabbling about it within twenty-four hours!" Courtin's monologue hindered him from noticing that his knock was not immediately answered, and that the door, contrary to the trustful habits of the peasantry, was bolted. At last, however, the door opened, and when Courtin's eyes fell upon the scene before him he was so unprepared for what he saw that he actually recoiled from the threshold. "Who is dead here?" he asked. "Look!" replied the widow, without leaving her seat in the chimney-corner, which she had resumed after opening the door. Courtin turned his eyes again to the bed, and though he could see beneath the sheet only the outline of a man's form, he guessed the truth. "Pascal!" he cried; "is it Pascal?" "I thought you knew it," said the widow. "I?" "Yes, you,--you, who are the chief cause of his death." "I?--I?" replied Courtin, remembering what Joseph had just said to him, and feeling it all-important for his own safety to deny his share in the matter. "I swear to you, on the word of an honest man, that I have not seen your husband for over a week." "Don't swear," replied the widow. "Pascal never swore; neither did he lie." "But who told you that I had seen him?" persisted Courtin. "It is too bad to blame me for nothing!" "Don't lie in presence of the dead, Monsieur Courtin," said Marianne; "it will bring down evil upon you." "I am not lying," stammered the man. "Pascal left this house to meet you; you engaged him as guide for the soldiers." Courtin made a movement of denial. "Oh! I don't blame you for that," continued the widow, looking at a peasant-girl, about twenty-five to thirty years of age, who was winding her distaff in the opposite corner of the fireplace; "it was his duty to give assistance to those who want to prevent our country from being torn by civil war." "That's my object, my sole object," replied Courtin, lowering his voice, so that the young peasant-woman hardly heard him. "I wish the government would rid us once for all of these fomenters of trouble,--these nobles who crush us with their wealth in peace, and massacre us when it comes to war. I am doing my best for this end, Mistress Picaut; but I daren't boast of it, you see, because you never know what the people about here may do to you." "Why should you complain if they strike you from behind, when you hide yourself in striking them?" said Marianne, with a look of the deepest contempt. "Damn it! one does as one dares, Mistress Picaut," replied Courtin, with some embarrassment. "It is not given to all the world to be brave and bold like your poor husband. But we'll revenge him, that good Pascal! we'll revenge him. I swear it to you!"