e lady who
was to be queen when the present elderly king should die--was on her
journey from Germany, and was to pass through Saint Menehould to Paris,
with her splendid train of nobles and gentry; and the whole country was
alive with preparations to greet her loyally as she passed. The houses
of the village were cleaned and adorned; and gangs of labourers were at
work repairing the roads of the district;--not hired labourers, but
peasants, who were obliged by law to quit the work of their own fields
or kilns, when called upon, to repair the roads, for a certain number of
days. These road-menders were not likely to be among the most hearty
welcomers of the Dauphiness; for they had been called off, some from
their field-work, just at the time when the loss of a few days would
probably cause great damage to the crops;--and others from the charcoal
works, when their families could ill spare the small wages they gained
at the kilns. These forced labourers would willingly have given up
their sight of the Dauphiness, if she would have gone to Paris by
another route, so that this road-mending might have been left to a more
convenient season.

The peasants round Saint Menehould were not all out upon the roads,
however. In the midst of a wood, a little to the north of the village,
the sound of a mallet might be heard by any traveller in the lane which
led to the ponds, outside the estate of the Count de D--.

The workman who was so busy with his mallet was not a charcoal-burner;
and the work he was doing was on his own account. It was Charles
Bertrand, a young peasant well-known in the village, who had long been
the lover of Marie Randolphe, the pretty daughter of a tenant of the
Count de D--. When they were first engaged, everybody who knew them was
glad, and said they would be a happy couple. But their affairs did not
look more cheerful as time went on. Charles toiled with all his might,
and tried so earnestly to save money, that he did not allow himself
sufficient food and rest, and was now almost as sallow and gaunt-looking
as his older neighbours; and yet he could never get nearer to his object
of obtaining a cottage and field to which he might take Marie home.
Marie grew somewhat paler, and her face less pretty; for, besides her
anxiety for her lover, she had hard living at home. Her father and
mother had her two young brothers to maintain, as well as themselves;
and no toil, no efforts on the part of the family,