"Yes, I am, Germain, I hear what you say," replied little Marie; "but I
am thinking of what my mother has always told me: that a woman of sixty
is much to be pitied when her husband is seventy or seventy-five and
can't work any longer to support her. He grows infirm, and she must take
care of him at an age when she herself is beginning to have great need
of care and rest. That is how people come to end their lives in the
gutter."

"Parents are right to say that, I agree, Marie," said Germain; "but,
after all, they would sacrifice the whole of youth, which is the best
part of life, to provide against what may happen at an age when one has
ceased to be good for anything, and when one is indifferent about ending
his life in one way or another. But I am in no danger of dying of hunger
in my old age. I am in a fair way to save up something, because, living
as I do with my wife's people, I work hard and spend nothing. Besides, I
will love you so well, you know, that that will prevent me from growing
old. They say that when a man's happy he retains his youth, and I feel
that I am younger than Bastien just from loving you; for he doesn't love
you, he's too stupid, too much of a child to understand how pretty and
good you are, and made to be courted. Come, Marie, don't hate me, I am
not a bad man; I made my Catherine happy; she said before God, on her
death-bed, that she had never been anything but contented with me, and
she advised me to marry again. It seems that her heart spoke to her
child to-night, just as he went to sleep. Didn't you hear what he said?
and how his little mouth trembled while his eyes were looking at
something in the air that we couldn't see! He saw his mother, you may be
sure, and she made him say that he wanted you to take her place."

"Germain," Marie replied, greatly surprised and very grave, "you talk