“Yes, perhaps,” replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.

“Then come, and get the praise of men; you’re sure of it!” cried Catherine.  “Ha! you’ll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to pick up good luck.  There’s the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might marry you.  But that’s not all; if you only knew what comforts you can find there against vexation and worry.  Why, Socquard’s boiled wine will make you forget every trouble you ever had.  Fancy! it can make you dream, and feel as light as a bird.  Didn’t you ever drink boiled wine?  Then you don’t know what life is.”

The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with boiled wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry over twelve years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put her lips to a glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her grandfather when ill.  The taste had left a sort of magic influence in the memory of the poor child, which may explain the interest with which she listened, and on which the evil-minded Catherine counted to carry out a plan already half-successful.  No doubt she was trying to bring her victim, giddy from the fall, to the moral intoxication so dangerous to young women living in the wilds of nature, whose imagination, deprived of other nourishment, is all the more ardent when the occasion comes to exercise it.  Boiled wine, which Catherine had held in reserve, was to end the matter by intoxicating the victim.

“What do they put into it?” asked La Pechina.

“All sorts of things,” replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her brother were coming; “in the first place, those what d’ ye call ’ems that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic, —­you fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you happy! you can snap your fingers at all your troubles!”

“I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance,” said La Pechina.

“Afraid of what?” asked Catherine.  “There’s not the slightest danger.  Think what lots of people there will be.  All the bourgeois will be looking at us!  Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our misery.  See it and die,—­for it’s enough to satisfy any one.”

“If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!” cried La Pechina, her eyes blazing.

“Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear man, and he’d be pleased to see you admired like a little queen.  Why do you like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather and the Burgundians.  It’s bad to neglect your own people.  Besides, why should the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair?  Oh! if you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside himself, and say to him, as I say to Godain, ‘Go there!’ and he goes, ‘Do that!’ and he does it!  You’ve got it in you, little one, to turn the head of a bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin.  Monsieur Amaury took a fancy to my sister Marie because she is fair and because he is half-afraid of me; but he’d adore you, for ever since those people at the pavilion have spruced you up a bit you’ve got the airs of an empress.”