Henriette had listened to her with a grave expression on her face. Such things surprised her; she could not understand them. Doubtless she herself was different. Her heart was with her husband and her brother over yonder, where the bullets were raining. How was it possible to slumber peacefully, or think of passion, and smile and jest when loved ones were in peril?
'But your husband, my dear, and that young fellow too; does it not stir your heart not to be with them?' she said. 'Think of it; they may be brought back to you, dead, at any moment.'
With a wave of her beautiful bare arm Gilberte swiftly drove the frightful vision away. 'Good heavens! what's that you say? How cruel of you to spoil my morning for me like that. No, no, I won't think of it; it is too dreadful.'
Then even Henriette could not help smiling. She remembered their childhood, when Gilberte had been sent for the benefit of her health to a farm near Le Chêne Populeux; her father, Commander de Vineuil--Director of Customs at Charleville since his retirement from the army in consequence of his wounds--having felt the more anxious about her when he had found her coughing, as he was haunted by the remembrance of his young wife, carried off by phthisis a short time previously. Gilberte was then only nine years old, but she was already a turbulent coquette, fond of juvenile theatricals, invariably wishing to play the part of the queen, draped in all the scraps of finery she could find, and carefully preserving the silver paper wrapped round her chocolate in order to make crowns and bracelets of it. And she had remained much the same when in her twentieth year she had become the wife of M. Maginot of Mézières, an inspector of the State forests. Mézières, which is cramped up within its ramparts, was not to her liking; she infinitely preferred the open, fête-enlivened life of Charleville, and continued residing there. Her father was no longer alive and she enjoyed complete liberty, her husband being such a perfect cipher that she in nowise troubled herself about him. Provincial malignity had bestowed many lovers upon her at that time, but although, by reason of her father's old connections and her relationship to Colonel de Vineuil, she lived amid a perfect stream of uniforms, she had really had but one weakness, and that for Captain Beaudoin. She was not of a perverse nature; she was simply giddy, fond of pleasure, and, if she had erred, it certainly seemed to be because of the irresistible need she experienced to be beautiful and gay.