ite well--isn't he?"

"As well as you or me--he is a strapping young fellow."

She became silent again, trying to collect her ideas; then slowly:

"Where has the _Notre Dame des Vents_ gone to?"

"Why, just to Marseilles."

She could not repress a start.

"Is that really true?"

"'Tis really true."

"Do you know Duclos?"

"Yes, I do know him."

She still hesitated; then in a very gentle tone:

"Good! That's good!"

"What do you want with him?"

"Listen!--you will tell him--nothing!"

He stared at her, more and more perplexed. At last, he put this question
to her:

"Do you know him, too, yourself?"

"No," said she.

"Then what do you want with him?"

Suddenly, she made up her mind what to do, left her seat, rushed over to
the bar where the landlady of the tavern presided, seized a lemon, which
she tore open, and shed its juice into a glass, then she filled this
glass with pure water, and carrying it across to him:

"Drink this!"

"Why?"

"To make it pass for wine. I will talk to you afterwards."

He drank it without further protest, wiped his lips with the back of his
hand, then observed:

"That's all right. I am listening to you."

"You will promise not to tell him you have seen me, or from whom you
learned what I am going to tell you. You must swear not to do so."

He raised his hand.

"All right. I swear I will not."

"Before God?"

"Before God."

"Well, you will tell him that his father died, that his mother died, that
his brother died, the whole three in one month, of typhoid fever, in
January, 1883--three years and a half ago."

In his turn, he felt all his blood set in motion through his entire body,
and for a few seconds he was so much overpowered that he could make no
reply; then he began to doubt what she had told him, and asked:

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure."

"Who told it to you?"

She laid her hands on his shoulders, and looking at him out of the depths
of her eyes:

"You swear not to blab?"

"I swear that I will not."

"I am his sister!"

He uttered that name in spite of himself:

"Francoise?"

She contemplated him once more with a fixed stare, then, excited by a
wild feeling of terror, a sense of profound horror, she faltered in a
very low tone, almost speaking into his mouth:

"Oh! oh! it is you, Celestin."

They no longer stirred, their eyes riveted in one another.

Around them, his comrades were still yelling. The sounds made by glasses,
by