They no longer felt cold.

The young man rejoiced to find, from the regularity of her breathing, that the girl was now asleep; this repose would enable them to proceed on their way with spirit.

He resolved to let her slumber for an hour.

The sky was still black, and the approach of day was but faintly indicated by a whitish line in the east.

Behind the lovers there must have been a pine wood whose musical awakening it was that the young man heard amidst the morning breezes.
And meantime the wailing of the bells grew more sonorous in the quivering atmosphere, lulling Miette's slumber even as it had accompanied her passionate fever.
Until that troublous night, these young people had lived through one of those innocent idylls that blossom among the toiling masses, those outcasts and folks of simple mind amidst whom one may yet occasionally find amours as primitive as those of the ancient Greek romances.
Miette had been scarcely nine years old at the time when her father was sent to the galleys for shooting a gendarme.