“Oh, Jacques, Jacques, how could you leave us! how could you go away and leave us, after all that’s been between us,” she said, as he bustled about to make some kind of bed for her in the little hut, in which they were to rest for the night.

“Leave you,” said Chapeau, who had listened for some time in silence to her upbraidings; “leave you, how could I help leaving .you?  Has not everybody left everybody?  Did not M. Henri leave his sister, and M. de Lescure leave his wife?  And though they are now here all together, it’s by chance that they came here, the same as you have come yourself.  As long as these wars last, Annot dear, no man can answer as to where he will go, or what he will do.”

“Oh, these weary wars, these weary wars!” said she, “will they never be done with?  Will the people never be tired of killing, and slaying, and burning each other?  And what is the King the better of it?  Ain’t they all dead:  the King, and the Queen, and the young Princes, and all of them?”

“You wouldn’t have us give up now, Annot, would you?  You wouldn’t have us lay down our arms, and call ourselves republicans, after all we have done and suffered?”

Annot didn’t answer.  She wouldn’t call herself a republican; but her sufferings and sorrows had greatly damped the loyal zeal she had shown when she worked her little fingers to the bone in embroidering a white flag for her native village.  She was now tired and cold, wet and hungry; for Chapeau had been able to get no provisions but a few potatoes:  so she laid herself down on the hard bed which he had prepared for her; and as he spread his own coat over her shoulders, she felt that it was, at any rate, some comfort to have her own lover once more near her.

Jacques and the old smith had no bed, so they were fain to content themselves with sitting opposite to each other on two low stools; the best seats which the hut afforded.  Jacques felt that it was incumbent on him to do the honours of the place, and that some apology was necessary for the poor accommodation which he had procured for his friends.

“This is a poor place for you, Michael Stein,” he commenced, “a very poor place for both of you, after your own warm cottage at Echanbroignes.”

“It’s a poor place, truly, M. Chapeau,” said the smith, looking round on the bare walls of the little hut.

“Indeed it is, my friend, and sorry am I to see you and Annot so badly lodged.  But what then; we shall be in Laval tomorrow, and have the best of everything—­that is, if not tomorrow, the day after.”

“I don’t much care about the best of everything, M. Chapeau.  I’ve not used myself to the best, but I would it had pleased God. to have allowed me to labour out the rest of my days in the little smithy at Echanbroignes.  I never wanted more than the bread which I could earn.”

“You never did, Michael, you never did,” said Chapeau, trying to flatter the old man; “and, like an honest man, you endure without flinching what you suffer for your King.  Give us your hand, my friend, we’ve no wine to drink his health, but as long as our voices are left, let us cry:  Vive le Roi!”