Page:Colas breugnon.djvu/297

Rh cry my eyes out for what I cannot have; I am not so badly off, and contented enough on the whole; but I can't help thinking how different things are now from what I used to expect. How far our youthful dreams are from the things we come to accept in later years! I don't know if it is sad or ridiculous, but when I remember all the hopes and fears, vows and flames, and for what? To make some man's pot boil. After all, it is as much as most of us deserve, but if any one had told me so, once upon a time!—Well, there is always some fun to be got out of it. Laughter is a sauce that would make anything taste good, and that has never been lacking to you and me. Daddy; we can always laugh when we have made fools of ourselves."

Such as it was, you can be sure we did not deny ourselves that consolation, and had many a joke, too, at the expense of other people. Sometimes we would fall silent; she occupied with her work and I with my book; but we kept up a little murmur like a brook which flows underground till it can leap out again into the sunshine; an idea would come into Martine's head which made her burst out laughing, and then our tongues would run on again faster than ever.

I should have been glad to introduce Plutarch to