his story got so much into my head
(and after a time all our heads seemed to get confused and full of wild
and bewildering expedients) that I found myself suggesting--I, a man
known for sense and reason--that we should blow trumpets at some time to
be fixed, which was a thing the ancients had done in the strange tale
which had taken possession of me. M. le Cure looked at me with
disapproval. He said, 'I did not expect from M. le Maire anything that
was disrespectful to religion.' Heaven forbid that I should be
disrespectful to religion at any time of life, but then it was
impossible to me. I remembered after that the tale of which I speak,
which had so seized upon me, was in the sacred writings; but those who
know me will understand that no sneer at these writings or intention of
wounding the feelings of M. le Cure was in my mind.

I was seated one day upon a little inequality of the ground, leaning my
back against a half-withered hawthorn, and dozing with my head in my
hands, when a soothing, which always diffuses itself from her presence,
shed itself over me, and opening my eyes, I saw my Agnes sitting by me.
She had come with some food and a little linen, fresh and soft like her
own touch. My wife was not gaunt and worn like me, but she was pale and
as thin as a shadow. I woke with a start, and seeing her there, there
suddenly came a dread over me that she would pass away before my eyes,
and go over to Those who were within Semur. I cried '_Non, mon Agnes;
non, mon Agnes:_ before you ask, No!' seizing her and holding her fast
in this dream, which was not altogether a dream. She looked at me with a
smile, that smile that has always been to me as the rising of the sun
over the earth.

'_Mon ami_,' she said surprised, 'I ask nothing, except that you should
take a little rest and spare thyself.' Then she added, with haste, what
I knew she would say, 'Unless it were this, _mon ami_. If I were
permitted, I would go into the city--I would ask those who are there
what is their meaning: and if no way can be found--no act of
penitence.--Oh! do not answer in haste! I have no fear; and it would be
to save thee.'

A strong throb of anger came into my throat. Figure to yourself that I
looked at my wife with anger, with the same feeling which had moved me
when the deserters left us; but far more hot and sharp. I seized her
soft hands and crushed them in mine. 'You would leave me!' I said. 'You
would desert your husband. You woul