“Men like weaklings,” said Catherine.  “You see me, don’t you?” she added, showing her handsome, strong arms.  “I please Godain, who is a poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count’s groom; but Lupin’s son is afraid of me.  I tell you it is the small kind of men who love me, and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and at Soulanges, ‘Ha! what a fine girl!’ Now YOU, that’s another thing; you’ll please the fine men.”

“Ah!  Catherine, if it were true—­that!” cried the bewitched child.

“It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and yet all the other girls are in love with him.  He is a fine lad!  If you’ll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard’s for the midsummer ball, you’ll be the handsomest girl there, and all the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you.  Come, won’t you?  —­See here, I’ve been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some boiled wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning,” she added quickly, seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina’s eyes which women understand so well.  “We’ll share it together, and you’ll fancy the men are in love with you.”

During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his sister had seated La Pechina.  Catherine, who had now and then cast her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine.

“Here, take some,” she said, offering it.

“It burns me!” cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking two or three swallows from it.

“Silly child!” replied Catherine; “see here!” and she emptied the rustic bottle without taking breath.  “See how it slips down; it goes like a sunbeam into the stomach.”

“But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard,” cried Genevieve; “and it is all spilt!  Nicolas frightened me so!”

“Don’t you like Nicolas?”

“No,” answered Genevieve.  “Why does he persecute me?  He can get plenty other girls, who are willing.”

“But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley—­”

“So much the worse for him.”

“I see you don’t know him,” answered Catherine, as she seized the girl rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in that position with her strong arms.  At this moment Nicolas appeared.  Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might, and drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then she twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which Catherine was not prepared, and rose to run away.  Catherine, still on the ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face.  This frightful fall stopped the brave child’s cries for a moment.  Nicolas attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though giddy from the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip of iron.