*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69153 ***

                            FRANÇOIS THE WAIF




                                    BY




                               GEORGE SAND




                       TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

                            JANE MINOT SEDGWICK




                         WITH AN ETCHING BY E. ABOT




                                 NEW-YORK

                          GEORGE H. RICHMOND & CO.

                                   1894




CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV




PREFATORY NOTE


François le Champi, a pretty idyl that tells of homely affections,
self-devotion, "humble cares and delicate fears," opens a little vista
into that Arcadia to which, the poet says, we were all born. It offers
many difficulties to the translator. It is a rustic tale, put into the
mouths of peasants, who relate it with a primitive simplicity, sweet and
full of sentiment in the French, but prone to degenerate into
mawkishness and monotony when turned into English. Great care has been
taken to keep the English of this version simple and idiomatic, and yet
religiously to avoid any breach of faith toward the author. It is hoped
that, though the original pure and limpid waters have necessarily
contracted some stain by being forced into another channel, they may yet
yield refreshment to those thirsty souls who cannot seek them at the
fountain-head.

                             J. M. S.

_Stockbridge, January, 1894._




PREFACE


FRANÇOIS LE CHAMPI appeared for the first time in the _feuilleton_ of
the "Journal des Débats." Just as the plot of my story was reaching its
development, another more serious development was announced in the first
column of the same newspaper. It was the final downfall of the July
Monarchy, in the last days of February, 1848.

This catastrophe was naturally very prejudicial to my story, the
publication of which was interrupted and delayed, and not finally
completed, if I remember correctly, until the end of a month. For those
of my readers who are artists either by profession or instinct, and are
interested in the details of the construction of works of art, I shall
add to my introduction that, some days before the conversation of which
that introduction is the outcome, I took a walk through the _Chemin aux
Napes_. The word _nape_, which, in the figurative language of that part
of the country, designates the beautiful plant called _nénufar_, or
_nymphææ_, is happily descriptive of the broad leaves that lie upon the
surface of the water, as a cloth (_nappe_) upon a table; but I prefer to
write it with a single _p_, and to trace its derivation from _napée_,
thus leaving unchanged its mythological origin.

The _Chemin aux Napes_, which probably none of you, my dear readers,
will ever see, as it leads to nothing that can repay you for the trouble
of passing through so much mire, is a break-neck path, skirting along a
ditch where, in the muddy water, grow the most beautiful nymphææ in
the world, more fragrant than lilies, whiter than camellias, purer than
the vesture of virgins, in the midst of the lizards and other reptiles
that crawl about the mud and flowers, while the kingfisher darts like
living lightning along the banks, and skims with a fiery track the rank
and luxuriant vegetation of the sewer.

A child six or seven years old, mounted bare-back upon a loose horse,
made the animal leap the hedge behind me, and then, letting himself
slide to the ground, left his shaggy colt in the pasture, and returned
to try jumping over the barrier which he had so lightly crossed on
horseback a minute before. It was not such an easy task for his little
legs; I helped him, and had with him a conversation similar to that
between the miller's wife and the foundling, related in the beginning of
"The Waif." When I questioned him about his age, which he did not know,
he literally delivered himself of the brilliant reply that he was two
years old. He knew neither his own name, nor that of his parents, nor of
the place he lived in; all that he knew was to cling on an unbroken
colt, as a bird clings to a branch shaken by the storm.

I have had educated several foundlings of both sexes, who have turned
out well physically and morally. It is no less certain, however, that
these forlorn children are apt, in rural districts, to become bandits,
owing to their utter lack of education. Intrusted to the care of the
poorest people, because of the insufficient pittance assigned to them,
they often practise, for the benefit of their adopted parents, the
shameful calling of beggars. Would it not be possible to increase this
pittance on condition that the foundlings shall never beg, even at the
doors of their neighbors and friends?

I have also learned by experience that nothing is more difficult than to
teach self-respect and the love of work to children who have already
begun understandingly to live upon alms.

                             GEORGE SAND.

_Nohant, May 20, 1852._


[Illustration]


THE WAIF




INTRODUCTION


R*** AND I were coming home from our walk by the light of the moon
which faintly silvered the dusky country lanes. It was a mild autumn
evening, and the sky was slightly overcast; we observed the resonance of
the air peculiar to the season, and a certain mystery spread over the
face of nature. At the approach of the long winter sleep, it seems as if
every creature and thing stealthily agreed to enjoy what is left of life
and animation before the deadly torpor of the frost; and as if the whole
creation, in order to cheat the march of time, and to avoid being
detected and interrupted in the last frolics of its festival, advanced
without sound or apparent motion toward its orgies in the night. The
birds give out stifled cries instead of their joyous summer warblings.
The cricket of the fields sometimes chirps inadvertently; but it soon
stops again, and carries elsewhere its song or its wail. The plants
hastily breathe out their last perfume, which is all the sweeter for
being more delicate and less profuse. The yellowing leaves now no longer
rustle in the breeze, and the flocks and herds graze in silence without
cries of love or combat.

My friend and I walked quietly along, and our involuntary thoughtfulness
made us silent and attentive to the softened beauty of nature, and to
the enchanting harmony of her last chords, which were dying away in an
imperceptible _pianissimo_. Autumn is a sad and sweet _andante_, which
makes an admirable preparation for the solemn _adagio_ of winter.

"It is all so peaceful," said my friend at last, for, in spite of our
silence, he had followed my thoughts as I followed his; "everything
seems absorbed in a reverie so foreign and so indifferent to the labors,
cares, and preoccupations of man, that I wonder what expression, what
color, and what form of art and poetry human intelligence could give at
this moment to the face of nature. In order to explain better to you the
end of my inquiry, I may compare the evening, the sky, and the
landscape, dimmed, and yet harmonious and complete, to the soul of a
wise and religious peasant, who labors and profits by his toil, who
rejoices in the possession of the life to which he is born, without the
need, the longing, or the means of revealing and expressing his inner
life. I try to place myself in the heart of the mystery of this natural
rustic life--I, who am civilized, who cannot enjoy by instinct alone,
and who am always tormented by the desire of giving an account of my
contemplation, or of my meditation, to myself and to others.

"Then, too," continued my friend, "I am trying to find out what relation
can be established between my intelligence, which is too active, and
that of the peasant, which is not active enough; just as I was
considering a moment ago what painting, music, description, the
interpretation of art, in short, could add to the beauty of the autumnal
night which is revealed to me in its mysterious silence, and affects me
in some magical and unknown way."

"Let us see," said I, "how your question is put. This October night,
this colorless sky, this music without any distinct or connected melody,
this calm of nature, and the peasant who by his very simplicity is more
able than we to enjoy and understand it, though he cannot portray
it--let us put all this together and call it _primitive life_, with
relation to our own highly developed and complicated life, which I shall
call _artificial life_. You are asking what possible connection or
direct link can there be between these two opposite conditions in the
existence of persons and things; between the palace and the cottage,
between the artist and the universe, between the poet and the laborer."

"Yes," he answered, "and let us be exact: between the language spoken by
nature, primitive life, and instinct, and that spoken by art,
science,--in a word, by _knowledge_."

"To answer in the language you have adopted, I should say that the link
between _knowledge_ and sensation is _feeling_."

"It is about the definition of feeling that I am going to question you
and myself, for its mission is the interpretation which is troubling me.
It is the art or artist, if you prefer, empowered to translate the
purity, grace, and charm of the primitive life to those who only live
the artificial life, and who are, if you will allow me to say so, the
greatest fools in the world in the presence of nature and her divine
secrets."

"You are asking nothing less than the secret of art, and you must look
for it in the breast of God. No artist can reveal it, for he does not
know it himself, and cannot give an account of the sources of his own
inspiration or his own weakness. How shall one attempt to express
beauty, simplicity, and truth? Do I know? And can anybody teach us? No,
not even the greatest artists, because if they tried to do so they would
cease to be artists, and would become critics; and criticism--"

"And criticism," rejoined my friend, "has been revolving for centuries
about the mystery without understanding it. But, excuse me, that is not
exactly what I meant. I am still more radical at this moment, and call
the power of art in question. I despise it, I annihilate it, I declare
that art is not born, that it does not exist; or, if it has been, its
time is past. It is exhausted, it has no more expression, no more breath
of life, no more means to sing of the beauty of truth. Nature is a work
of art, but God is the only artist that exists, and man is but an
arranger in bad taste. Nature is beautiful, and breathes feeling from
all her pores; love, youth, beauty are in her imperishable. But man has
but foolish means and miserable faculties for feeling and expressing
them. He had better keep aloof, silent and absorbed in contemplation.
Come, what have you to say?"

"I agree, and am quite satisfied with your opinion," I answered.

"Ah!" he cried, "you are going too far, and embrace my paradox too
warmly. I am only pleading, and want you to reply."

"I reply, then, that a sonnet of Petrarch has its relative beauty, which
is equivalent to the beauty of the water of Vaucluse; that a fine
landscape of Ruysdael has a charm which equals that of this evening;
that Mozart sings in the language of men as well as Philomel in that of
birds; that Shakspeare delineates passions, emotions, and instincts as
vividly as the actual primitive man can experience them. This is art and
its relativeness--in short, feeling."

"Yes, it is all a work of transformation! But suppose that it does not
satisfy me? Even if you were a thousand times in the right according to
the decrees of taste and esthetics, what if I think Petrarch's verses
less harmonious than the roar of the waterfall, and so on? If I maintain
that there is in this evening a charm that no one could reveal to me
unless I had felt it myself; and that all Shakspeare's passion is cold in
comparison with that I see gleaming in the eyes of a jealous peasant who
beats his wife, what should you have to say? You must convince my
feeling. And if it eludes your examples and resists your proofs? Art is
not an invincible demonstrator, and feeling not always satisfied by the
best definition."

"I have really nothing to answer except that art is a demonstration of
which nature is the proof; that the preëxisting fact of the proof is
always present to justify or contradict the demonstration, which nobody
can make successfully unless he examine the proof with religious love."

"So the demonstration could not do without the proof; but could the
proof do without the demonstration?"

"No doubt God could do without it; but, although you are talking as if
you did not belong to us, I am willing to wager that you would
understand nothing of the proof if you had not found the demonstration
under a thousand forms in the tradition of art, and if you were not
yourself a demonstration constantly acting upon the proof."

"That is just what I am complaining of. I should like to rid myself of
this eternal irritating demonstration; to erase from my memory the
teachings and the forms of art; never to think of painting when I look
at a landscape, of music when I listen to the wind, or of poetry when I
admire and take delight in both together. I should like to enjoy
everything instinctively, because I think that the cricket which is
singing just now is more joyous and ecstatic than I."

"You complain, then, of being a man?"

"No; I complain of being no longer a primitive man."

"It remains to be known whether he was capable of enjoying what he could
not understand."

"I do not suppose that he was similar to the brutes, for as soon as he
became a man he thought and felt differently from them. But I cannot
form an exact idea of his emotions, and that is what bothers me. I
should like to be what the existing state of society allows a great
number of men to be from the cradle to the grave--I should like to be a
peasant; a peasant who does not know how to read, whom God has endowed
with good instincts, a serene organization, and an upright conscience;
and I fancy that in the sluggishness of my useless faculties, and in the
Ignorance of depraved tastes, I should be as happy as the primitive man
of Jean-Jacques's dreams."

"I, too, have had this same dream; who has not? But, even so, your
reasoning is not conclusive, for the most simple and ingenuous peasant
may still be an artist; and I believe even that his art is superior to
ours. The form is different, but it appeals more strongly to me than all
the forms which belong to civilization. Songs, ballads, and rustic tales
say in a few words what our literature can only amplify and disguise."

"I may triumph, then?" resumed my friend. "The peasant's art is the
best, because it is more directly inspired by nature by being in closer
contact with her. I confess I went to extremes in saying that art was
good for nothing; but I meant that I should like to feel after the
fashion of the peasant, and I do not contradict myself now. There are
certain Breton laments, made by beggars, which in three couplets are
worth all Goethe and Byron put together, and which prove that
appreciation of truth and beauty was more spontaneous and complete in
such simple souls than in our most distinguished poets. And music, too!
Is not our country full of lovely melodies? And though they do not
possess painting as an art, they have it in their speech, which is a
hundred times more expressive, forcible, and logical than our literary
language."

"I agree with you," said I, "especially as to this last point. It drives
me to despair that I am obliged to write in the language of the Academy,
when I am much more familiar with another tongue infinitely more fitted
for expressing a whole order of emotions, thoughts, and feelings."

"Oh, yes!" said he, "that fresh and unknown world is closed to modern
art, and no study can help you to express it even to yourself, with all
your sympathies for the peasant, if you try to introduce it into the
domain of civilized art and the intellectual intercourse of artificial
life."

"Alas!" I answered, "this thought has often disturbed me. I have myself
seen and felt, in common with all civilized beings, that primitive life
was the dream and ideal of all men and all times. From the shepherds of
Longus down to those of Trianon, pastoral life has been a perfumed Eden,
where souls wearied and harassed by the tumult of the world have sought
a refuge. Art, which has always flattered and fawned upon the too
fortunate among mankind, has passed through an unbroken series of
_pastorals_. And under the title of 'The History of Pastorals' I have
often wished to write a learned and critical work, in which to review
all the different rural dreams to which the upper classes have so fondly
clung.

"I should follow their modifications, which are always in inverse
relation to the depravity of morals, for they become innocent and
sentimental in proportion as society is shameless and corrupt. I should
like to _order_ this book of a writer better qualified than I to
accomplish it, and then I should read it with delight. It should be a
complete treatise on art; for music, painting, architecture, literature
in all its forms, the theater, poetry, romances, eclogues, songs,
fashions, gardens, and even dress, have been influenced by the
infatuation for the pastoral dream. All the types of the golden age, the
shepherdesses of Astræa, who are first nymphs and then marchionesses,
and who pass through the Lignon of Florian, wear satin and powder under
Louis XV., and are put into sabots by Sedaine at the end of the
monarchy, are all more or less false, and seem to us to-day contemptible
and ridiculous. We have done with them, and see only their ghosts at the
opera; and yet they once reigned at court and were the delight of kings,
who borrowed from them the shepherd's crook and scrip.

"I have often wondered why there are no more shepherds, for we are not
so much in love with the truth lately that art and literature can afford
to despise the old conventional types rather than those introduced by
the present mode. To-day we are devoted to force and brutality, and on
the background of these passions we embroider decorations horrible
enough to make our hair stand on end if we could take them seriously."

"If we have no more shepherds," rejoined my friend, "and if literature
has changed one false ideal for another, is it not an involuntary
attempt of art to bring itself down to the level of the intelligence of
all classes? Does not the dream of equality afloat in society impel art
to a fierce brutality in order to awaken those instincts and passions
common to all men, of whatever rank they may be? Nobody has as yet
reached the truth. It exists no more in a hideous realism than in an
embellished idealism; but there is plainly a search for it, and if the
search is in the wrong direction, the eagerness of the pursuit is only
quickened. Let us see: the drama, poetry, and the novel have thrown away
the shepherd's crook for the dagger, and when rustic life appears on the
scene it has a stamp of reality which was wanting in the old pastorals.
But there is no more poetry in it, I am sorry to say; and I do not yet
see the means of reinstating the pastoral ideal without making it either
too gaudy or too somber. You have often thought of doing it, I know; but
can you hope for success?"

"No," I answered, "for there is no form for me to adopt, and there is no
language in which to express my conception of rustic simplicity. If I
made the laborer of the fields speak as he does speak, it would be
necessary to have a translation on the opposite page for the civilized
reader; and if I made him speak as we do, I should create an impossible
being, in whom it would be necessary to suppose an order of ideas which
he does not possess."

"Even if you made him speak as he does speak, your own language would
constantly make a disagreeable contrast; and in my opinion you cannot
escape this criticism. You describe a peasant girl, call her _Jeanne_,
and put into her mouth words which she might possibly use. But you, who
are the writer of the novel, and are anxious to make your readers
understand your fondness for painting this kind of type--you compare her
to a druidess, to a Jeanne d'Arc, and so on. Your opinions and language
make an incongruous effect with hers, like the clashing of harsh colors
in a picture; and this is not the way fully to enter into nature, even
if you idealize her. Since then you have made a better and more truthful
study in 'The Devil's Pool.' Still, I am not yet satisfied; the tip of
the author's finger is apparent from time to time; and there are some
author's words, as they are called by Henri Mounier, an artist who has
succeeded in being true in _caricature_, and who has consequently solved
the problem he had set for himself. I know that your own problem is no
easier to solve. But you must still try, although you are sure of not
succeeding; masterpieces are only lucky attempts. You may console
yourself for not achieving masterpieces, provided that your attempts are
conscientious."

"I am consoled beforehand," I answered, "and I am willing to begin again
whenever you wish; please give me your advice."

"For example," said he, "we were present last evening at a rustic
gathering at the farm, and the hemp-dresser told a story until two
o'clock in the morning. The priest's servant helped him with his tale,
and resumed it when he stopped; she was a peasant-woman of some slight
education; he was uneducated, but happily gifted by nature and endowed
with a certain rude eloquence. Between them they related a true story,
which was rather long, and like a simple kind of novel. Can you remember
it?"

"Perfectly, and I could repeat it word for word in their language."

"But their language would require a translation; you must write in your
own, without using a single word unintelligible enough to necessitate a
footnote for the reader."

"I see that you are setting an impossible task for me--a task into which
I have never plunged without emerging dissatisfied with myself, and
overcome with a sense of my own weakness."

"No matter, you must plunge in again, for I understand you artists; you
need obstacles to rouse your enthusiasm, and you never do well what is
plain and easy to you. Come, begin, tell me the story of the 'Waif,' but
not in the way that you and I heard it last night. That was a masterly
piece of narrative for you and me who are children of the soil. But tell
it to me as if you had on your right hand a Parisian speaking the modern
tongue, and on your left a peasant before whom you were unwilling to
utter a word or phrase which he could not understand. You must speak
dearly for the Parisian, and simply for the peasant. One will accuse you
of a lack of local color, and the other of a lack of elegance. But I
shall be listening too, and I am trying to discover by what means art,
without ceasing to be universal, can penetrate the mystery of primitive
simplicity, and interpret the charm of nature to the mind."

"This, then, is a study which we are going to undertake together?"

"Yes, for I shall interrupt you when you stumble."

"Very well, let us sit down on this bank covered with wild thyme. I will
begin; but first allow me to clear my voice with a few scales."

"What do you mean? I did not know that you could sing."

"I am only speaking metaphorically. Before beginning a work of art, I
think it is well to call to mind some theme or other to serve as a type,
and to induce the desired frame of mind. So, in order to prepare myself
for what you ask, I must recite the story of the dog of Brisquet, which
is short, and which I know by heart."

"What is it? I cannot recall it."

"It is an exercise for my voice, written by Charles Nodier, who tried
his in all possible keys; a great artist, to my thinking, and one who
has never received all the applause he deserved, because, among all his
varied attempts, he failed more often than he succeeded. But when a man
has achieved two or three masterpieces, no matter how short they may be,
he should be crowned, and his mistakes should be forgotten. Here is the
dog of Brisquet. You must listen."

Then I repeated to my friend the story of the "Bichonne," which moved
him to tears, and which he declared to be a masterpiece of style.

"I should be discouraged in what I am going to attempt," said I, "for
this Odyssey of the poor dog of Brisquet, which did not take five
minutes to recite, has no stain or blot; it is a diamond cut by the
first lapidary in the world--for Nodier is essentially a lapidary in
literature. I am not scientific, and must call sentiment to my aid.
Then, too, I cannot promise to be brief, for I know beforehand that my
study will fail in the first of all requisites, that of being short and
good at the same time."

"Go on, nevertheless," said my friend, bored by my preliminaries.

"This, then, is the history of '_François the Champi_'" I resumed, "and
I shall try to remember the first part without any alteration. It was
Monique, the old servant of the priest, who began."

"One moment," said my severe auditor, "I must object to your title.
_Champi_ is not French."

"I beg your pardon," I answered. "The dictionary says it is obsolete,
but Montaigne uses it, and I do not wish to be more French than the
great writers who have created the language. So I shall not call my
story 'François the Foundling,' nor 'François the Bastard,' but
'François the _Champi_'--that is to say, the Waif, the forsaken child
of the fields, as he was once called in the great world, and is still
called in our part of the country."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER I


ONE morning, when Madeleine Blanchet, the young wife of the miller of
Cormouer, went down to the end of her meadow to wash her linen in the
fountain, she found a little child sitting in front of her washing-board
playing with the straw she used as a cushion for her knees. Madeleine
Blanchet looked at the child, and was surprised not to recognize him,
for the road which runs near by is unfrequented, and few strangers are
to be met with in the neighborhood.

"Who are you, my boy?" said she to the little boy, who turned
confidingly toward her, but did not seem to understand her question.
"What is your name?" Madeleine Blanchet went on, as she made him sit
down beside her, and knelt down to begin to wash.

"François," answered the child.

"François who?"

"Who?" said the child stupidly.

"Whose son are you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know your father's name?"

"I have no father."

"Is he dead then?"

"I don't know."

"And your mother?"

"She is over there," said the child pointing to a poor little hovel which
stood at the distance of two gunshots from the mill, and the thatched
roof of which could be seen through the willows.

"Oh! I know," said Madeleine. "Is she the woman who has come to live
here, and who moved in last evening?"

"Yes," answered the child.

"And you used to live at Mers?"

"I don't know."

"You are not a wise child. Do you know your mother's name, at least?"

"Yes, it is Zabelle."

"Isabelle who? Don't you know her other name?"

"No, of course not."

"What you know will not wear your brains out," said Madeleine, smiling
and beginning to beat her linen.

"What do you say?" asked little François. Madeleine looked at him
again; he was a fine child, and had magnificent eyes. "It is a pity,"
she thought, "that he seems to be so idiotic. How old are you?" she
continued. "Perhaps you do not know that either."

The truth is that he knew no more about this than about the rest. He
tried his best to answer, ashamed to have the miller's wife think him so
foolish, and delivered himself of this brilliant reply:

"Two years old."

"Indeed?" said Madeleine, wringing out her linen, without looking at him
any more, "you are areal little simpleton, and nobody has taken the
trouble to teach you, my poor child. You are tall enough to be six years
old, but you have not the sense of a child of two."

"Perhaps," answered François. Then, making another effort, as if to
shake off the lethargy from his poor little mind, he said:

"Were you asking for my name? It is François the Waif."

"Oh! I understand now," said Madeleine, looking at him compassionately;
and she was no longer astonished that he was so dirty, ragged, and
stupid.

"You have not clothes enough," said she, "and the weather is chill; I am
sure that you must be cold."

"I do not know," answered the poor waif, who was so accustomed to
suffering that he was no longer conscious of it.

Madeleine sighed. She thought of her little Jeannie, who was only a year
old, and was sleeping comfortably in his cradle watched over by his
grand-mother, while this poor little waif was shivering all alone at the
fountain's brink, preserved from drowning only by the mercy of
Providence, for he was too foolish to know that he would die if he fell
into the water.

Madeleine, whose heart was full of kindness, felt the child's arm and
found it warm, although he shook from time to time, and his pretty face
was very pale.

"Have you any fever?" she asked.

"I don't know," answered the child, who was always feverish.

Madeleine Blanchet loosened the woolen shawl from her shoulders and
wrapped it round the waif, who let her have her way without showing
either surprise or pleasure. She picked up all the straw from under his
knees and made a bed for him, on which he soon fell asleep; then she
made haste to finish washing her little Jeannie's clothes, for she
nursed her baby and was anxious to return to him.

When her task was completed, the wet linen was twice as heavy as before,
and she could not carry it all. She took home what she could, and left
the rest with her wooden beater beside the water, intending to come back
immediately and wake up the waif. Madeleine Blanchet was neither tall
nor strong. She was a very pretty woman, with a fearless spirit and a
reputation for sense and sweetness.

As she opened the door of her house she heard the clattering of sabots
running after her over the little bridge above the mill-dam, and,
turning round, she saw the waif, who had caught up with her, and was
bringing her her beater, her soap, the rest of the linen, and her shawl.

"Oh!" said she, laying her hand on his shoulder, "you are not so foolish
as I thought, for you are obliging, and nobody who has a good heart can
be stupid. Come in, my child, come in and rest. Look at this poor little
boy! He is carrying a load heavier than himself! Here," said she to the
miller's old mother, who handed her her baby, rosy and smiling, "here
is a poor sick-looking waif. You understand fevers, and we must try to
cure him."

"Ah! that is the fever of poverty!" replied the old woman, as she looked
at François. "He could cure it with good soup, but he cannot get that.
He is the little waif that belongs to the woman who moved in yesterday.
She is your husband's tenant, Madeleine. She looks very wretched, and I
am afraid that she will not pay regularly."

Madeleine did not answer. She knew that her husband and her
mother-in-law were not charitable, and that they loved their money more
than their neighbor. She nursed her baby, and when the old woman had
gone out to drive home the geese, she took François by the hand, and,
holding Jeannie on her arm, went with them to Zabelle's.

Zabelle, whose real name was Isabelle Bigot, was an old maid of fifty,
as disinterested as a woman can be when she has nothing to live on, and
is in constant dread of starvation. She had taken François after he was
weaned, from a dying woman, and had brought him up ever since, for the
sake of the monthly payment of a few pieces of silver, and with the
expectation of making a little servant out of him. She had lost her
sheep, and was forced to buy others on credit, whenever she could obtain
it; for she had no other means of support than her little flock, and a
dozen hens, which lived at the expense of the parish. She meant
François to tend this poor flock along the roadsides, until he should
be old enough to make his first communion, after which she expected to
hire him out as best she could, either as a little swineherd or a
plowboy, and she was sure that if his heart were good he would give part
of his wages to his adopted mother.

Zabelle had come from Mers, the day after the feast of Saint Martin,
leaving her last goat behind her in payment of what she owed on her
rent, and had taken possession of the little cottage belonging to the
mill of Cormouer, without being able to offer any security beside her
pallet-bed, two chairs, a chest, and a few earthen vessels. The house
was so poor, so ill-protected from the weather, and of such trifling
value, that the miller was obliged to incur the risk of letting it to a
poor tenant, or to leave it unoccupied.

Madeleine talked with Zabelle, and soon perceived that she was not a bad
woman, and that she would do all in her power to pay the rent. She had
some affection for the waif, but she was so accustomed to see him suffer
and to suffer herself that she was at first more surprised than pleased
by the pity which the rich miller's wife showed for the forlorn child.

At last, after she had recovered from her astonishment, and understood
that Madeleine had not come to ask anything of her, but to do her a
kindness, she took courage, related her story, which was like that of
all the unfortunate, and thanked her warmly for her interest. Madeleine
assured her that she would do her best to help her, but begged her to
tell nobody, acknowledging that she was not her own mistress at home,
and could only afford her assistance in secret.

She left her woolen shawl with Zabelle, and exacted a promise from her
that she would cut it into a coat for the waif that same evening, and
not allow the pieces to be seen before they were sewed together. She
saw, indeed, that Zabelle consented reluctantly, thinking the shawl very
convenient for her own use, and so she was obliged to tell her that she
would do no more for her unless the waif were warmly clothed in three
days' time.

"Do you not suppose," she added, "that my mother-in-law, who is so
wide-awake, would recognize my shawl on your shoulders? Do you wish to
get me into trouble? You may count upon my helping you in other ways if
you keep your own counsel. Now, listen to me: your waif has the fever,
and he will die if you do not take good care of him."

"Do you think so?" said Zabelle. "I should be very sorry to lose him,
because he has the best heart in the world; he never complains, and is
as obedient as if he belonged to a respectable family. He is quite
different from other waifs, who are ill-tempered and unruly, and always
in mischief."

"That is only because they are rebuffed and ill-treated. If yours is
good, it is because you have been kind to him, you may be sure."

"That is true," rejoined Zabelle; "children are more grateful than
people think, and though this little fellow is not bright, he can be
very useful at times. Once, when I was ill last year, and he was only
five years old, he took as good care of me as if he were a grown-up
person."

"Listen," said the miller's wife: "you must send him to me every morning
and evening, at the hour when I give soup to my child. I shall make more
than is necessary, and the waif may eat what is left; nobody will pay
any attention."

"Oh! I shall not dare bring him to you, and he will never have enough
sense to know the right time himself."

"Let us arrange it in this way. When the soup is ready, I will put my
distaff on the bridge over the dam. Look, you can see it very well from
here. Then you must send the child over with a sabot in his hand, as if
he were coming to get a light for the fire; and if he eats my soup, you
will have all yours to yourself. You will both be better fed."

"That will do very well," answered Zabelle. "I see that you are a clever
woman, and that I am fortunate in coming here. I was very much afraid of
your husband, who has the reputation of being a hard man, and if I could
have gone elsewhere I should not have taken his house, especially as it
is in wretched repair, and the rent is high. But I see that you are kind
to the poor, and will help me to bring up my waif. Ah! if the soup could
only cure his fever! It would be a great misfortune to me to lose that
child! He brings me but little profit, for all that I receive from the
asylum goes for his support. But I love him as if he were my own child,
because I know that he is good, and will be of use to me later. Have you
noticed how well-grown he is for his age, and will soon be able to
work?"

Thus François the Waif was reared by the care and kindness of
Madeleine, the miller's wife. He soon recovered his health, for he was
strongly built, and any rich man in the country might have wished for a
son with as handsome a face and as well-knit a frame. He was as brave as
a man, and swam in the river like a fish, diving even under the
mill-dam; he feared neither fire nor water; he jumped on the wildest
colts and rode them without a halter into the pasture, kicking them with
his heels to keep them in the right path, and holding on to their manes
when they leaped the ditches. It was singular that he did all this in
his quiet, easy way, without saying anything, or changing his childlike
and somewhat sleepy expression.

It was on account of this expression that he passed for a fool; but it
is none the less true that if it were a question of robbing a magpie's
nest at the top of a lofty poplar, or of finding a cow that had strayed
far from home, or of killing a thrush with a stone, no child was bolder,
more adroit, or more certain of success than he. The other children
called it _luck_, which is supposed to be the portion of a waif in this
hard world. So they always let him take the first part in dangerous
amusements.

"He will never get hurt," they said, "because he is a waif. A kernel of
wheat fears the havoc of the storm, but a random seed never dies."

For two years all went well. Zabelle found means to buy a few sheep and
goats, though no one knew how. She rendered a good many small services
to the mill, and Cadet Blanchet, the miller, was induced to make some
repairs in her roof, which leaked in every direction. She was enabled to
dress herself and her waif a little better, and looked gradually less
poverty-stricken than on her arrival. Madeleine's mother-in-law made
some harsh comments on the disappearance of certain articles, and on the
quantity of bread consumed in the house, and once Madeleine was obliged
to plead guilty in order to shield Zabelle from suspicion; but, contrary
to his mother's expectation, Cadet Blanchet was hardly angry at all, and
seemed to wink at what his wife had done.

The secret of Cadet Blanchet's compliance was that he was still very
much in love with his wife. Madeleine was pretty, and not the least of a
coquette; he heard her praises sung everywhere. Besides, his affairs
were prosperous, and, as he was one of those men who are cruel only when
they are in dread of calamity, he was kinder to Madeleine than anybody
could have supposed possible. This roused Mother Blanchet's jealousy,
and she revenged herself by petty annoyances, which Madeleine bore in
silence, and without complaining to her husband.

It was the best way of putting an end to them, and no woman could be
more patient and reasonable in this respect than Madeleine. But they say
in our country that goodness avails less in the end than malice, and the
day came when Madeleine was rebuked and called to account for her
charities.

It was a year when the grain had been wasted by hail, and an overflow of
the river had spoiled the hay. Cadet Blanchet was not in a good humor,
and one day, as he was coming back from market with a comrade who had
just married a very beautiful girl, the latter said to him:

"You, too, were not to be pitied _in your day_, for your Madelon used to
be a very attractive girl."

"What do you mean by _my day_, and _Madelon used to be_? Do you think
that she and I are old? Madeleine is not twenty yet, and I am not aware
that she has lost her looks."

"Oh, no, I do not say so," replied the other. "Madeleine is certainly
still good-looking; but you know that when a woman marries so young you
cannot expect her to be pretty long. After she has nursed one child, she
is already worn; and your wife was never strong, for you see that she is
very thin, and has lost the appearance of health. Is the poor thing
ill?"

"Not that I know of. Why do you ask me?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think she looks sad, as if she suffered or had some
sorrow. A woman's bloom lasts no longer than the blossom of the vine. I
must expect to see my wife with a long face and sober expression. And we
men are only in love with our wives while we are jealous of them. They
exasperate us; we scold them and beat them sometimes; they are
distressed and weep; they stay at home and are afraid of us; then they
are bored and care no more about us. But we are happy, for we are the
masters. And yet, one fine morning, lo and behold, a man sees that if
nobody wants his wife, it is because she has grown ugly; so he loves her
no longer, and goes to court his neighbor's. It is his fate. Good
evening, Cadet Blanchet; you kissed my wife rather too warmly to-night;
I took note of it, though I said nothing. I tell you this to let you
know that she and I shall not quarrel over it, and that I shall try not
to make her as melancholy as yours, because I know my own character. If
I am ever jealous, I shall be cruel, and when I have no more occasion
for jealousy, I shall be still worse perhaps."

A good disposition profits by a good lesson; but, though active and
intelligent, Cadet Blanchet was too arrogant to keep his
self-possession. He came home with his head high and his eye bloodshot.
He looked at Madeleine as he had not done for a long time, and perceived
that she was pale and altered. He asked her if she were ill, so rudely
that she turned still paler, and answered in a faint voice that she was
quite well. He took offense, Heaven knows why, and sat down to the
table, desirous of seeking a quarrel. He had not long to wait for an
opportunity. They talked of the dearness of wheat, and Mother Blanchet
remarked, as she did every evening, that too much bread was eaten in the
house. Madeleine was silent. Cadet Blanchet wanted to make her
responsible for the waste, and the old woman declared that she had
caught the waif carrying away half a loaf that very morning. Madeleine
should have been indignant and held her own, but she could only cry.
Blanchet thought of what his companion had said to him, and was still
more irritated; and so it happened that from that day on, explain it as
you can, he no longer loved his wife, but made her wretched.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER II


HE made her wretched, and as he had never made her happy she was doubly
unlucky in her marriage. She had allowed herself to be married, at
sixteen, to this rough, red-faced man, who drank deeply on Sunday, was
in a fury all Monday, in bad spirits on Tuesday, and worked like a horse
all the rest of the week to make up for lost time, for he was
avaricious, and had no leisure to think of his wife. He was less
ill-tempered on Saturday, because he had finished his work, and expected
to amuse himself next day. But a single day of good humor in a week is
not enough, and Madeleine had no pleasure in seeing him merry, because
she knew that he would be sure to come home the next evening in a
passion.

But as she was young and pretty, and so gentle that it was impossible to
be angry long with her, there were still intervals when he was kind and
just, and when he took her hands in his and said:

"Madeleine, you are a good wife, and I think that you were made
expressly for me. If I had married a coquette, such as so many women
are, I should kill her, or I should drown myself under my own mill-wheel.
But I know that you are well-behaved and industrious, and that you are
worth your weight in gold."

After four years of married life, however, his love had quite gone; he
had no more kind words for her, and was enraged that she made no answer
to his abuse. What answer could she make? She knew that her husband was
unjust, and was unwilling to reproach him for it, for she considered it
her duty to respect the master whom she had never been able to love.

Mother Blanchet was pleased to see her son master of the house again, as
she said; just as if it had ever been otherwise. She hated her
daughter-in-law, because she knew her to be better than herself. When
she could find no other cause of complaint, she reviled her for not
being strong, for coughing all winter, and for having only one child.
She despised her for this, for knowing how to read and write, and for
reading prayers in a corner of the orchard, instead of gossiping and
chattering with the dames of the vicinity.

Madeleine placed her soul in God's hands, and thinking lamentations
useless, she bore her affliction as if it were her due. She withdrew her
heart from this earth, and often dreamed of paradise, as if she wished
to die. Still, she was careful of her health, and armed herself with
courage, because she knew that her child could only be happy through
her, and she accepted everything for the sake of the love she bore him.

Though she could not feel any great affection for Zabelle, she was still
fond of her, because this woman, who was half good and half selfish,
continued to do her best for the poor waif; and Madeleine, who saw how
people deteriorate who think of themselves alone, was inclined to esteem
only those who thought sometimes of others. As she was the only person
in the neighborhood who took no care of herself, she was entirely
isolated and very sorrowful, without fully understanding the cause of
her grief.

Little by little, however, she observed that the waif, who was then ten
years old, began to think as she did. When I say think, I mean you to
understand that she judged from his behavior; for there was no more
sense in the poor child's words than on the first day she had spoken
with him. He could not express himself, and when people tried to make
him talk they were sure to interrupt him immediately, for he knew
nothing about anything. But if he were needed to run an errand, he was
always ready, and when it was an errand for Madeleine, he ran before she
could ask him. He looked as if he had not understood the commission, but
he executed it so swiftly and well that even she was amazed.

One day, as he was carrying little Jeannie in his arms, and allowing him
to pull his hair for his amusement, Madeleine caught the child from him
with some slight irritation, saying half involuntarily:

"François, if you begin now by suffering all the whims of other people,
there is no knowing where they will stop."

To her great surprise, François answered:

"I should rather suffer evil than return it."

Madeleine was astonished, and gazed into the eyes of the waif, where she
saw something she had never observed in the eyes even of the most honest
persons she knew; something so kind, and yet so decided, that she was
quite bewildered. She sat down on the grass with her child on her knees,
and made the waif sit on the edge of her dress, without daring to speak
to him. She could scarcely understand why she was overcome with fear and
shame that she had often jested with this child for being so foolish. It
is true that she had always done so with extreme gentleness, and perhaps
she had pitied and loved him the more for his stupidity; but now she
fancied that he had always understood her ridicule, and had been pained
by it without being able to say anything in return.

She soon forgot this incident, for a short time afterward her husband,
who had become infatuated with a disreputable woman in the neighborhood,
undertook to hate his wife in good earnest, and to forbid her to allow
Zabelle and her boy to enter the mill. Madeleine fell to thinking of
still more secret means of aiding them, and warned Zabelle, telling her
that she should pretend to neglect her for a time.

Zabelle was very much in awe of the miller, and had not Madeleine's
power of endurance for the love of others. She argued to herself that
the miller was the master, and could turn her out of doors, or increase
her rent, and that Madeleine would be unable to prevent it. She
reflected also that if she submitted to Mother Blanchet, she would
establish herself in the good graces of the old woman, whose protection
would be more useful to her than that of the young wife. So she went to
the miller's mother, and confessed that she had received help from her
daughter-in-law, declaring that she had done so against her will, and
only out of pity for the waif, whom she had no means of feeding. The old
woman detested the waif, though for no reason except that Madeleine took
an interest in him. She advised Zabelle to rid herself of him, and
promised her at this price to obtain six months' credit on her rent. The
morrow of Saint Martin's day had come round, and as the year had been a
hard one, Zabelle was out of money, and Madeleine was so closely watched
that for some time she had been unable to give her any. Zabelle boldly
promised to take back the waif to the foundling asylum the next day.

She had no sooner given her word than she repented of it, and at the
sight of little François sleeping on his wretched pallet, her heart was
as heavy as if she were about to commit a mortal sin. She could not
sleep, and before dawn Mother Blanchet entered the hovel.

"Come, get up, Zabeau," she said. "You gave me your promise and you must
keep it. If you wait to speak to my daughter-in-law, you will never do
anything, but you must let the boy go, in her interest as well as your
own, you see. My son has taken a dislike to him on account of his
stupidity and greediness; my daughter-in-law has pampered him too much,
and I am sure that he is a thief already. All foundlings are thieves
from their birth, and it is mere folly to expect anything of such
brats. This one will be the cause of your being driven away from here,
and will ruin your reputation; he will furnish my son with a reason for
beating his wife every day, and in the end, when he is tall and strong,
he will become a highwayman, and will bring you to shame. Come, come,
you must start! Take him through the fields as far as Corley, and there
the stage-coach passes at eight o'clock. Get in with him, and you will
reach Châteauroux, at noon, at the latest. You can come back this
evening; there is a piece of money for your journey, and you will have
enough left over to amuse yourself with in town."

Zabelle woke the child, dressed him in his best, made a bundle of the
rest of his clothes, and, taking his hand, started off with him by the
light of the moon.

As she walked along and the day broke, her heart failed her; she could
neither hasten her steps, nor speak, and when she came to the highroad,
she sat down on the side of a ditch, more dead than alive. The
stage-coach was approaching, and they had arrived only just in time.

The waif was not in the habit of worrying, and thus far he had followed
his mother without suspicion; but when he saw a huge carriage bowling
toward him for the first time in his life, the noise it made frightened
him, and he tried to pull Zabelle back into the meadow which they had
just left to join the highroad. Zabelle thought that he understood his
fate, and said:

"Come, poor François, you really must!"

François was still more frightened. He thought that the stage-coach was
an enormous animal running after him to devour him. He who was so bold
in meeting all the dangers which he knew lost his head, and rushed back
screaming into the meadow. Zabelle ran after him; but when she saw him
pale as death, her courage deserted her. She followed him all across the
meadow, and allowed the stage-coach to go by.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER III


THEY returned by the same road they had come, until they had gone half
the distance, and then they stopped to rest. Zabelle was alarmed to see
that the child trembled from head to foot, and his heart beat so
violently as to agitate his poor old shirt. She made him sit down, and
attempted to comfort him, but she did not know what she was saying, and
François was not in a state to guess her meaning. She drew out a bit of
bread from her basket and tried to persuade him to eat it; but he had no
desire for food, and they sat on for a long time in silence.

At last, Zabelle, who was in the habit of recurring to her first
thoughts, was ashamed of her weakness, and said to herself that she
would be lost if she appeared again at the mill with the child. Another
stage was to pass toward noon, and she decided to stay where they were
until the moment necessary for returning to the highroad; but as
François was so terrified that he had lost the little sense he
possessed, and as for the first time in his life he was capable of
resisting her will, she tried to tempt him with the attractions of the
horse's bells, the noise of the wheels, and the speed of the great
vehicle.

In her efforts to inspire him with confidence, she said more than she
intended; perhaps her repentance urged her to speak, in spite of
herself, or it may be that when François woke that morning he had heard
certain words of Mother Blanchet, which now returned to his mind; or
else his poor wits cleared suddenly at the approach of calamity; at all
events, he began to say, with the same expression in his eyes which had
once astonished and almost startled Madeleine:

"Mother, you want to send me away from you! You want to take me far off
from here and leave me."

Then he remembered the word asylum, spoken several times in his hearing.
He had no idea what an asylum was, but it seemed to him more horrible
than the stage-coach, and he cried with a shudder:

"You want to put me in the asylum!"

Zabelle had gone too far to retreat. She believed that the child knew
more of her intentions than he really did, and without reflecting how
easy it would be to deceive him and rid herself of him by stratagem, she
undertook to explain the truth to him, and to make him understand that
he would be much happier at the asylum than with her, that he would be
better cared for there, would learn to work, and would be placed for a
time in the charge of some woman less poor than herself, who would be a
mother to him.

This attempted consolation put the finishing touch to the waif's
despair. A strange and unknown future inspired him with more terror than
all Zabelle could say of the hardships of a life with her. Besides, he
loved with all his might this ungrateful mother, who cared less for him
than for herself. He loved another, too, almost as much as Zabelle, and
she was Madeleine; only he did not know that he loved her, and did not
speak of her. He threw himself sobbing on the ground, tore up the grass
with his hands and flung it over his face, as if he had fallen in mortal
agony. When Zabelle, in her distress and impatience, tried to make him
get up by force and threats, he beat his head so hard against the stones
that he was covered with blood, and she thought he was about to kill
himself.

It pleased God that Madeleine Blanchet should pass by at that moment.
She had heard nothing of the departure of Zabelle and the child, and was
coming home from Presles, where she had carried back some wool to a
lady, who had given it to her to spin very fine, as she was considered
the best spinster far and wide. She had received her payment, and was
returning to the mill with ten crowns in her pocket. She was going to
cross the river on one of those little plank bridges on a level with the
surface of the water, which are often to be met with in that part of the
country, when she heard heart-piercing shrieks, and recognized at once
the voice of the poor waif. She flew in the direction of the cries, and
saw the child, bathed in blood, struggling in Zabelle's arms. She could
not understand it at first; for it looked as if Zabelle had cruelly
struck him, and were trying to shake him off. This seemed the more
probable, as François, on catching sight of her, rushed toward her,
twined his arms about her like a little snake, and clung to her skirts,
screaming:

"Madame Blanchet, Madame Blanchet, save me!"

Zabelle was tall and strong, and Madeleine was small and slight as a
reed. Still, she was not afraid, and, imagining that Zabelle had gone
crazy, and was going to murder the child, she placed herself in front of
him, resolved to protect him or to die while he was making his escape.

A few words, however, sufficed for an explanation. Zabelle, who was more
grieved than angry, told the story, and François, who at last took in
all the sadness of his lot, managed this time to profit by what he
heard, with more cleverness than he had ever been supposed to possess.
After Zabelle had finished, he kept fast hold of the miller's wife,
saying:

"Don't send me away, don't let me be sent away."

And he went to and fro between Zabelle, who was crying, and the miller's
wife, who was crying still harder, repeating all kinds of words and
prayers, which scarcely seemed to come from his lips, for this was the
first time he had ever been able to express himself.

"O my mother, my darling mother!" said he to Zabelle, "why do you want
me to leave you? Do you want me to die of grief and never see you again?
What have I done, that you no longer love me? Have I not always obeyed
you? Have I done any harm? I have always taken good care of our
animals--you told me so yourself; and when you kissed me every evening,
you said I was your child, and you never said that you were not my
mother! Keep me, mother, keep me; I am praying to you as I pray to God!
I shall always take care of you; I shall always work for you; if you are
not satisfied with me, you may beat me, and I shall not mind; but do not
send me away until I have done something wrong."

Then he went to Madeleine, and said:

"Madame Blanchet, take pity on me. Tell my mother to keep me. I shall
never go to your house, since it is forbidden, and if you want to give
me anything, I shall know that I must not take it. I shall speak to
Master Cadet Blanchet, and tell him to beat me and not to scold you on
my account. When you go into the fields, I shall always go with you to
carry your little boy, and amuse him all day. I shall do all you tell
me, and if I do any wrong, you need no longer love me. But do not let me
be sent away; I do not want to go; I should rather jump into the river."

Poor François looked at the river, and ran so near it, that they saw
his life hung by a thread, and that a single word of refusal would be
enough to make him drown himself. Madeleine pleaded for the child, and
Zabelle was dying to listen to her. Now that she was near the mill,
matters looked differently.

"Well, I will keep you, you naughty child," said she; "but I shall be on
the road to-morrow, begging my bread because of you. You are too stupid
to know it is your fault that I shall be reduced to such a condition,
and this is what I have gained by burdening myself with a child who is
no good to me, and does not even pay for the bread he eats."

"You have said enough, Zabelle," said the miller's wife, taking the
child in her arms to lift him from the ground, although he was very
heavy. "There are ten crowns for you to pay your rent with, or to move
elsewhere, if my husband persists in driving you away from here. It is
my own money--money that I have earned myself. I know that it will be
required of me, but no matter. They may kill me if they want; I buy this
child, he is mine, he is yours no longer. You do not deserve to keep a
child with such a warm heart, and who loves you so much. I shall be his
mother, and my family must submit. I am willing to suffer everything for
my children. I could be cut in pieces for my Jeannie, and I could endure
as much for this child, too. Come, poor François, you are no longer a
waif, do you hear? You have a mother, and you can love her as much as
you choose, for she will love you with her whole heart in return."

Madeleine said all this without being perfectly aware of what she was
saying. She whose disposition was so gentle was now highly excited. Her
heart rebelled against Zabelle, and she was really angry with her.
François had thrown his arms round the neck of the miller's wife, and
clasped her so tight that she lost her breath; and at the same time her
cap and neckerchief were stained with blood, for his head was cut in
several places.

Madeleine was so deeply affected, and was filled with so much pity,
dismay, sorrow, and determination at once, that she set out to walk
toward the mill with as much courage as a soldier advancing under fire.
Without considering that the child was heavy, and she herself so weak
that she could hardly carry her small Jeannie, she attempted to cross
the unsteady little bridge that sank under her weight. When she reached
the middle, she stopped. The child was so heavy that she swerved
slightly, and drops of perspiration started from her forehead. She felt
as if she should fall from weakness, when suddenly she called to mind a
beautiful and marvelous story that she had read the evening before in an
old volume of the "Lives of the Saints." It was the story of Saint
Christopher, who carried the child Jesus across the river, and found him
so heavy that he stopped in fear. She looked down at the waif. His eyes
had rolled back in his head, and his arms had relaxed their hold. The
poor child had either undergone too much emotion, or he had lost too
much blood, and had fainted.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER IV


WHEN Zabelle saw him thus, she thought he was dead. All her love for him
returned, and with no more thought of the miller or his wicked old
mother, she seized the child from Madeleine, and began to kiss him, with
sobs and cries. They sat down beside the river, and, laying him across
their knees, they washed his wounds and stanched the blood with their
handkerchiefs; but they had nothing with which to bring him to.
Madeleine warmed his head against her bosom, and breathed on his face
and into his mouth as people do with the drowned. This revived him, and
as soon as he opened his eyes and saw what care they were taking of him,
he kissed Madeleine and Zabelle, one after the other, so passionately
that they were obliged to check him, fearing that he might faint again.

"Come, come," said Zabelle, "we must go home. No, I can never, never
leave that child; I see now, and I shall never think of it again. I
shall keep your ten crowns, Madeleine, so I can pay my rent to-night if
I am forced to do so. Do not tell about it; I shall go to-morrow to the
lady in Presles, so that she may not inform against you, and she can
say, in case of need, that she has not as yet given you the price of
your spinning. In this way we shall gain time, and I shall try so hard
that, even if I have to beg for it, I shall succeed in paying my debt to
you, so that you need not suffer on my account. You cannot take this
child to the mill; your husband would kill him. Leave him to me; I swear
to you that I shall take as good care of him as before, and if we are
tormented any further, we tan think of something else."

It came to pass that the waif's return was effected without disturbance,
and without exciting attention; for it happened that Mother Blanchet had
just fallen ill of a stroke of apoplexy, without having had an
opportunity of telling her son what she had exacted from Zabelle about
the waif, and Master Blanchet sent in all haste for Zabelle to come and
help in the household, while Madeleine and the servant were taking care
of his mother. For three days everything was in confusion at the mill.
Madeleine did not spare herself, and watched for three nights at the
bedside of her husband's mother, who died in her arms.

This blow allayed the miller's bad temper for some time. He had loved
his mother as much as he was capable of loving, and his vanity was
concerned in making as fine a funeral for her as his means allowed. He
forgot his mistress for the required time, and with pretended generosity
distributed his dead mother's clothes to the poor neighbors. Zabelle had
her share of the alms, and the waif received a franc piece, because
Blanchet remembered that once, when they were in urgent need of leeches
for the sick woman, and everybody was running futilely hither and
thither to look for them, the waif went off, without saying a word, to
fish some out of a pool where he knew they were, and brought them back
in less time than it took the others to start out for them.

So Cadet Blanchet gradually forgot his dislike, and nobody at the mill
knew of Zabelle's freak of sending back the waif to the asylum. The
question of Madeleine's ten crowns came up later, for the miller did not
neglect to make Zabelle pay the rent for her wretched cottage. Madeleine
said that she had lost them as she ran home through the fields, on
hearing of her mother-in-law's accident. Blanchet made a long search for
them and scolded a great deal, but he never found out the use to which
the money had been put, and Zabelle was not suspected.

After his mother's death, Blanchet's disposition changed little by
little, though not for the better. He found life still more tedious at
home, was less observant of what went on, and less niggardly in his
expenditure. He no longer earned anything, and, in proportion as he grew
fat, led a disorderly life, and cared no more for his work. He looked to
make his profit by dishonest bargains and unfair dealings, which would
have enriched him, if he had not spent on one hand what he gained on the
other. His mistress acquired more ascendency over him every day. She
took him with her to fairs and feasts, induced him to engage in petty
trickeries, and spend his time at the tavern. He learned how to gamble,
and was often lucky; but it would have been better for him to lose
always than acquire this unfortunate taste; for his dissipations threw
him entirely off his balance, and at the most trifling loss, he became
furious with himself, and ill-tempered toward everybody else.

While he was leading this wretched life, his wife, always wise and good,
governed the house and tenderly reared their only child. But she thought
herself doubly a mother, for she loved and watched over the waif almost
as much as if he were her own. As her husband became more dissolute, she
was less miserable and more her own mistress. In the beginning of his
licentious career he was still very churlish, because he dreaded
reproaches, and wished to hold his wife in a state of fear and
subjection. When he saw that she was by nature an enemy to strife, and
showed no jealousy, he made up his mind to leave her in peace. As his
mother was no longer there to stir him up against her, he was obliged to
recognize that no other woman was as thrifty as Madeleine. He grew
accustomed to spend whole weeks away from home, and whenever he came
back in the mood for a quarrel, he met with a mute patience that turned
away his wrath, and he was first astonished and ended by going to sleep.
So finally he came to see his wife only when he was tired and in need of
rest.

Madeleine must have been a very Christian woman to live thus alone with
an old servant and two children, and perhaps she was a still better
Christian than if she had been a nun. God had given her the great
privilege of learning to read, and of understanding what she read. Yet
she always read the same thing, for she possessed only two books, the
Holy Gospel and an abbreviated copy of the "Lives of the Saints." The
Gospel sanctified her, and saddened her to tears, when she read alone in
the evening beside her son's bed. The "Lives of the Saints" produced a
different effect upon her; it was just as when idle people read stories
and excite themselves over dreams and illusions. These beautiful tales
inspired her with courage and even gaiety. Sometimes, out in the fields,
the waif saw her smile and flush, when she had her book in her lap. He
wondered at it, and found it hard to understand how the stories which
she told him, with some little alteration in order adapt them to his
capacity (and also perhaps because she could not perfectly grasp them
from beginning to end), could come from that thing which she called her
book. He wanted to read, too, and learned so quickly and well that she
was amazed, and in his turn he was able to teach little Jeannie. When
François was old enough to make his first communion, Madeleine helped
him with his catechism, and the parish priest was delighted with the
intelligence and excellent memory of this child, who had always passed
for a simpleton, because he was very shy and never had anything to say.

After his first communion, and he was old enough to be hired out,
Zabelle was pleased to have him engaged as servant at the mill; and
Master Blanchet made no opposition, because it was plain to all that the
waif was a good boy, very industrious and obliging, and stronger, more
alert and sensible than the other children of his age. Then, too, he was
satisfied with ten crowns for wages, and it was an economical
arrangement for the miller. François was very happy to be entirely in
the service of Madeleine and the dear little Jeannie he loved so much,
and when he found that Zabelle could pay for her farm with his earnings,
and thus be relieved of her most besetting care, he thought himself as
rich as a king.

Unfortunately, poor Zabelle could not long enjoy her reward. At the
beginning of the winter, she fell seriously ill, and in spite of
receiving every care from the waif and Madeleine, she died on Candlemas
Day, after having so far recovered that they thought her well again.
Madeleine sorrowed and wept for her sincerely, but she tried to comfort
the poor waif, who but for her would have been inconsolable.

Even after a year's time, he still thought of her every day, and almost
every instant. Once he said to the miller's wife:

"I feel a kind of remorse when I pray for my poor mother's soul; it is
because I did not love her enough. I am very sure that I always did my
best to please her, that I never said any but kind words to her, and
that I served her in all ways as I serve you; but I must confess
something, Madame Blanchet, which troubles me, and for which, in secret,
I often ask God's forgiveness. Ever since the day my poor mother wanted
to send me back to the asylum, and you took my part, and prevented her
doing so, my love for her, against my will, grew less. I was not angry
with her; I did not allow myself even to think that she was wrong in
trying to rid herself of me. It was her right to do so; I stood in her
way; she was afraid of your mother-in-law, and after all she did it very
reluctantly; for I could see that she loved me greatly. In some way or
other, the idea keeps recurring to my mind, and I cannot drive it away.
From the moment you said to me those words which I shall never forget, I
loved you more than her, and in spite of all I could do, I thought of
you more often than of her. She is dead now, and I did not die of grief
as I should if you died!"

"What were the words I said, my poor child, that made you love me so
much? I do not remember them."

"You do not remember them?" said the waif, sitting down at the feet of
Madeleine, who was turning her wheel as she listened. "When you gave the
crowns to my mother, you said: 'There, I buy that child of you; he is
mine!' And then you kissed me and said: 'Now you are no longer a waif;
you have a mother who will love you as if you were her own!' Did not you
say so, Madame Blanchet?"

"If I did, I said what I meant, and am still of the same mind. Do you
think I have failed to keep my word?"

"Oh no! only--"

"Only what?"

"No. I cannot tell you, for it is wrong to complain and be thankless and
ungrateful."

"I know that you cannot be ungrateful, and I want you to say what you
have on your mind. Come, in what respect don't I treat you like my own
child? I order you to tell me, as I should order Jeannie."

"Well, it is--it is that you kiss Jeannie very often, and have never
kissed me since the day we were just speaking of. Yet I am careful to
keep my face and hands very clean, because I know that you do not like
dirty children, and are always running after Jeannie to wash and comb
him. But this does not make you kiss me any more, and my mother Zabelle
did not kiss me either. I see that other mothers caress their children,
and so I know that I am always a waif, and that you cannot forget it."

"Come and kiss me, François," said the miller's wife, making the child
sit on her knees and kissing him with much feeling. "It is true that I
did wrong never to think of it, and you deserved better of me. You see
now that I kiss you with all my heart, and you are very sure that you
are not a waif, are not you?"

The child flung his arms round Madeleine's neck, and turned so pale that
she was surprised, and putting him down gently from her lap, tried to
distract his attention. After a minute, he left her, and ran off to
hide. The miller's wife felt some uneasiness, and making a search for
him, she finally found him on his knees, in a corner of the barn, bathed
in tears.

"What does this mean, François?" said she, raising him up. "I don't
know what is the matter with you. If you are thinking of your poor
mother Zabelle, you had better say a prayer for her, and then you will
feel more at rest."

"No, no," said the child, twisting the end of Madeleine's apron, and
kissing it with all his might. "Are not you my mother?"

"Why are you crying then? You give me pain!"

"Oh, no! oh, no! I am not crying," answered François, drying his eyes
quickly, and looking up cheerfully; "I mean, I do not know why I was
crying. Truly, I cannot understand it, for I am as happy as if I were in
heaven."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER V


FROM that day on Madeleine kissed the child, morning and evening,
neither more nor less than if he had been her own, and the only
difference she made between Jeannie and François was that the younger
was the more petted and spoiled as became his age. He was only seven,
while the waif was twelve, and François understood perfectly that a big
boy like him could not be caressed like a little one. Besides, they were
still more unlike in looks than in years. François was so tall and
strong that he passed for fifteen, and Jeannie was small and slender
like his mother, whom he greatly resembled.

It happened one morning, when she had just received François's greeting
on her door-step, and had kissed him as usual, her servant said to her:

"I mean no offense, my good mistress, but it seems to me that boy is
very big to let you kiss him as if he were a little girl."

"Do you think so?" answered Madeleine, in astonishment. "Don't you know
how young he is?"

"Yes, and I should not see any harm in it, except that he is a waif, and
though I am only your servant, I would not be hired to kiss any such
riff-raff."

"What you say is wrong, Catherine," returned Madame Blanchet; "and above
all, you should not say it before the poor child."

"She may say it, and everybody else may say it, too," replied François,
boldly. "I don't care; if I am not a waif for you, Madame Blanchet, I am
very well satisfied."

"Only hear him!" said the servant. "This is the first time I ever knew
him to talk so much at once. Then you know how to put two or three words
together, do you, François? I really thought you could not even
understand what other people said. If I had known that you were
listening, I should not have spoken before you as I did, for I have no
idea of hurting your feelings. You are a good, quiet, obliging boy.
Come, you must not think of it any more; if it seems odd to me for our
mistress to kiss you, it is only because you are too big for it, and so
much coddling makes you look sillier than you really are."

Having tried to mend matters in this way, big Catherine set about making
her soup, and forgot all about what had passed.

The waif followed Madeleine to the place where she did her washing, and
sitting down beside her, he spoke as he knew how to speak with her and
for her alone.

"Do you remember, Madame Blanchet," said he, "how I was here once, long
ago, and you let me go to sleep in your shawl?"

"Yes, my child," said she, "it was the first time we ever saw each
other."

"Was it the first time? I was not certain, for I cannot recollect very
well; when I think of that time, it is all like a dream. How many years
ago is it?"

"It is--wait a minute--it is nearly six years, for my Jeannie was
fourteen months old."

"So I was not so old then as he is now? When he has made his first
communion, do you think he will remember all that is happening to him
now?"

"Oh! yes, I shall be sure to remember," cried Jeannie.

"That may be so or not," said François. "What were you doing yesterday
at this hour?"

Jeannie was startled, and opened his mouth to answer; then he stopped
short, much abashed.

"Well! I wager that you cannot give a better account of yourself,
either," said the miller's wife to François. She always took pleasure
in listening to the prattle of the two children.

"I?" said the waif, embarrassed, "wait a moment--I was going to the
fields, and passed by this very place--I was thinking of you. Indeed, it
was yesterday that the day when you wrapped me up in your shawl came
into my mind."

"You have a good memory, and it is surprising that you can remember so
far back. Can you remember that you were ill with fever?"

"No, indeed!"

"And that you carried home my linen without my asking you?"

"No."

"I have always remembered it, because that was the way I found out how
good your heart was."

"I have a good heart too, haven't I, mother?" said little Jeannie,
presenting his mother with an apple which he had half eaten.

"To be sure you have, and you must try to copy François in all the good
things you see him do."

"Oh, yes!" answered the child quickly, "I shall jump on the yellow colt
this evening, and shall ride it into pasture."

"Shall you?" said François, laughing. "Are you, too, going to climb up
the great ash-tree to hunt tomtits? I shall let you do it, my little
fellow! But listen, Madame Blanchet, there is something I want to ask of
you, but I do not know whether you will tell it to me."

"Let me hear."

"Why do they think they hurt my feelings when they call me a waif? Is
there any harm in being a waif?"

"No; certainly not, my child, since it is no fault of yours."

"Whose fault is it?"

"It is the fault of the rich people."

"The fault of the rich people! What does that mean?"

"You are asking a great many questions to-day; I shall answer you by and
by."

"No, no; right away, Madame Blanchet."

"I cannot explain it to you. In the first place, do you know yourself
what it is to be a waif?"

"Yes; it is being put in a foundling asylum by your father and mother,
because they have no money to feed you and bring you up."

"Yes, that is it. So you see that there are people so wretched as not to
be able to bring up their own children, and that is the fault of the
rich who do not help them."

"You are right!" answered the waif very thoughtfully. "Yet there are
some good rich people, since you are one, Madame Blanchet, and it is
only necessary to fall in their way."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER VI


NEVERTHELESS, the waif, who was always musing and trying to find reasons
for everything since he had learned to read and had made his first
communion, kept pondering over what Catherine had said to Madame
Blanchet about him; but it was in vain that he reflected, for he could
never understand why, now that he was growing older, he should no longer
kiss Madeleine. He was the most innocent boy in the world, and had no
suspicion of what boys of his age learn all too quickly in the country.

His great simplicity of mind was the result of his singular bringing-up.
He had never felt his position as a foundling to be a disgrace, but it
had made him very shy; for though he had not taken the title as an
insult, he was always surprised to find he possessed a characteristic
which made a difference between himself and those with whom he
associated. Foundlings are apt to be humbled by their fate, which is
generally thrust upon them so harshly that they lose early their
self-respect as Christians. They grow up full of hatred toward those who
brought them into the world, not to speak of those who helped them to
remain in it. It happened, however, that François had fallen into the
hands of Zabelle, who loved him and treated him with kindness, and
afterward he load met with Madeleine, who was the most charitable and
compassionate of women. She had been a good mother to him, and a waif
who receives affection is better than other children, just as he is
worse when he is abused and degraded.

François had never known any amusement or perfect content except when
in the company of Madeleine, and instead of running off with the other
shepherd-boys for his recreation, he had grown up quite solitary, or
tied to the apron-strings of the two women who loved him. Especially
when with Madeleine, he was as happy as Jeannie could be, and he was in
no haste to play with the other children, who were sure to call him a
waif, and with whom he soon felt himself a stranger, though he could not
tell why.

So he reached the age of fifteen without any knowledge of wrong or
conception of evil; his lips had never uttered an unclean word, nor had
his ears taken in the meaning of one. Yet, since the day that Catherine
had censured his mistress for the affection she showed him, the child
had the great good sense and judgment to forego his morning kiss from
the miller's wife. He pretended to forget about it, or perhaps to be
ashamed of being coddled like a little girl, as Catherine had said. But
at the bottom, he had no such false shame, and he would have laughed at
the idea, had he not guessed that the sweet woman he loved might incur
blame on his account. Why should she be blamed? He could not understand
it, and though he saw that he could never find it out by himself, he
shrank from asking Madeleine for an explanation. He knew that her
strength of love and kindness of heart had enabled her to endure the
carping of others; for he had a good memory, and recollected that
Madeleine had been upbraided, and had narrowly escaped blows in former
years because of her goodness to him.

Now, owing to his good instincts, he spared her the annoyance of being
rebuked and ridiculed on his account. He understood, and it is wonderful
that the poor child could understand, that a waif was to be loved only
in secret; and rather than cause any trouble to Madeleine, he would have
consented to do without her love.

He was attentive to his work, and as, in proportion as he grew older, he
had more to do, it happened that he was less and less with Madeleine. He
did not grieve for this, for, as he toiled, he said to himself that it
was for her, and that he would have his reward in seeing her at meals.
In the evening, when Jeannie was asleep and Catherine had gone to bed,
François still stayed up with Madeleine while she worked, and read
aloud to her, or talked with her. Peasants do not read very fast, so
that the two books they had were quite sufficient for them. When they
read three pages in an evening they thought it was a great deal, and
when the book was finished, so much time had passed since the beginning
that they could take it up again at the first page without finding it
too familiar. There are two ways of reading, and it may not be amiss to
say so to those persons who think themselves well educated. Those who
have much time to themselves and many books, devour so many of them and
cram so much stuff into their heads, that they are utterly confused; but
those who have neither leisure nor libraries are happy when a good book
foils into their hands. They begin it over again a thousand times
without weariness, and every time something strikes them which they had
not observed before. In the main, the idea is always the same, but it is
so much dwelt upon, so thoroughly enjoyed and digested, that the single
mind which possesses it is better fed and more healthy than thirty
thousand brains full of wind and twaddle. What I am telling you, my
children, I have from the parish priest, who knows all about it.

So these two persons lived happy with what they had to consume in the
matter of learning; and they consumed it slowly, helping each other to
understand and love all that makes us just and good. Thus they grew in
piety and courage; and they had no greater joy than to feel themselves
at peace with all the world, and to be of one mind at all times and in
all places, on the subject of the truth and the desire of holy living.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER VII


MASTER BLANCHET was no longer particular concerning his household
expenses, because he had fixed the amount of money which he gave to his
wife every month for her housekeeping, and made it as little as
possible. Madeleine could, without displeasing him, deprive herself of
her own comfort in order to give alms to the poor about her; sometimes
a little wood, another time part of her own dinner, again some
vegetables, some clothing, some eggs, and so on. She spent all she had
in the service of her neighbors, and when her money was exhausted, she
did with her own hands the work of the poor, so as to save the lives of
those among them who were ill and worn out. She was so economical, and
mended her old clothes so carefully, that she appeared to live
comfortably; and yet she was so anxious that her family should not
suffer for what she gave away, that she accustomed herself to eat
scarcely anything, never to rest, and to sleep as little as possible.
The waif saw all this, and thought it quite natural; for it was in his
character, as well as in the education he received from Madeleine, to
feel the same inclination, and to be drawn toward the same duty.
Sometimes, only, he was troubled by the great hardships which the
miller's wife endured, and blamed himself for sleeping and eating too
much. He would gladly have spent the night sewing and spinning in her
place; and when she tried to pay him his wages, which had risen to
nearly twenty crowns, he refused to take them, and obliged her to keep
them without the miller's knowledge.

"If my mother Zabelle were alive," said he, "this money would be for
her. What do you expect me to do with it? I have no need of it, since
you take care of my clothes, and provide me with sabots. Keep it for
somebody more unfortunate than I am. You work so hard for the poor
already, and if you give money to me, you must work still harder. If you
should fall ill and die like poor Zabelle, I should like to know what
good it would do me to have my chest full of money. Would it bring you
back again, or prevent me from throwing myself in the river?"

"You do not know what you are talking about, my child," said Madeleine,
one day that this idea returned to his mind, as happened from time to
time. "It is not a Christian act to kill oneself, and if I should die,
it would be your duty to live after me to comfort and help my Jeannie.
Should not you do that for me?"

"Yes, as long as Jeannie was a child and needed my love. But afterward!
Do not let us speak of this, Madame Blanchet. I cannot be a good
Christian on this point. Do not tire yourself out, and do not die, if
you want me to live on this earth."

"You may set your mind at ease, for I have no wish to die. I am well. I
am hardened to work, and now I am even stronger than I was in my youth."

"In your youth!" exclaimed François in astonishment. "Are not you
young, then?"

And he was afraid lest she might have reached the age for dying.

"I think I never had time to be young," answered Madeleine, laughing
like one who meets misfortune bravely. "Now I am twenty-five years old,
and that is a good deal for a woman of my make; for I was not born
strong like you, my boy, and I have had sorrows which have aged me more
than years."

"Sorrows! Heavens, yes! I knew it very well, when Monsieur Blanchet used
to speak so roughly to you. God forgive me! I am not a wicked boy, yet
once when he raised his hand against you as if to strike you--Oh! he did
well to change his mind, for I had seized a flail,--nobody had noticed
me,--and I was going to fall upon him. But that was a long time ago,
Madame Blanchet, for I remember that I was much shorter than he then,
and now I can look right over his head. And now that he scarcely speaks
to you any more, Madame Blanchet, you are no longer unhappy, are you?"

"So you think I am no longer unhappy, do you?" said Madeleine rather
sharply, thinking how it was that there had never been any love in her
marriage. Then she checked herself, for what she was going to say was no
concern of the waif's, and she had no right to put such ideas into a
child's head.

"You are right," said she; "I am no longer unhappy. I live as I please.
My husband is much kinder to me; my son is well and strong, and I have
nothing to complain of."

"Then don't I enter into your calculations? I--"

"You? You are well and strong, too, and that pleases me."

"Don't I please you in any other way?"

"Yes, you are a good boy; you are always right-minded, and I am
satisfied with you."

"Oh! if you were not satisfied with me, what a scamp, what a
good-for-nothing I should be, after the way in which you have treated
me! But there is still something else which ought to make you happy, if
you think as I do."

"Very well, tell me; for I do not know what puzzle you are contriving
for me."

"I mean no puzzle, Madame Blanche! I need but look into my heart, and I
see that even if I had to suffer hunger, thirst, heat, and cold, and
were to be beaten half to death every day into the bargain, and then had
only a bundle of thorns or a heap of stones to lie on--well, can you
understand?"

"I think so, my dear François; you could be happy in spite of so much
evil if only your heart were at peace with God."

"Of course that is true, and I need not speak of it. But I meant
something else."

"I cannot imagine what you are aiming at, and I see that you are
cleverer than I am."

"No, I am not clever. I mean that I could suffer all the pains that a man
living mortal life can endure, and could still be happy if I thought
Madame Blanchet loved me. That is the reason why I just said to you that
if you thought as I did, you would say: 'François loves me, and I am
content to be alive.'"

"You are right, my poor dear child," answered Madeleine; "and the things
you say to me sometimes make me want to cry. Yes, truly, your affection
for me is one of the joys of my life, and perhaps the greatest,
after--no, I mean with my Jeannie's. As you are older than he, you can
understand better what I say to you, and you can better explain your
thoughts to me. I assure you that I am never wearied when I am with both
of you, and the only prayer I make to God is that we may long be able to
live together as we do now, without separating."

"Without separating, I should think so!" said François. "I should
rather be cut into little pieces than leave you. Who else would love me
as you have loved me? Who would run the danger of being ill-treated for
the sake of a poor waif, and who would call me her child, her dear son?
For you call me so often, almost always. You often say to me when we are
alone: 'Call me _mother_, and not always Madame Blanchet.' I do not dare
to do so, because I am afraid of becoming accustomed to it and letting
it slip out before somebody."

"Well, even if you did so?"

"Oh! you would be sure to be blamed for it, and I do not like to have
you tormented on my account. I am not proud, and I do not care to have
it known that you have raised me from my orphan estate. I am satisfied
to know, all by myself, that I have a mother and am her child. Oh! you
must not die, Madame Blanchet," added poor François, looking at her
sadly, for his thoughts had long been running on possible calamity. "If
I lost you, I should have no other friend on this earth; you would go
straight into Paradise, and I am not sure that I deserve ever to receive
the reward of going there with you."

François had a kind of foreboding of heavy misfortune in all he said
and thought, and some little time afterward the misfortune fell.

He had become the servant of the mill, and it was his duty to make the
round of the customers of the mill, to carry their corn away on his
horse, and return it to them in flour. This sometimes obliged him to
take long rides, and for this same purpose he often visited Blanchet's
mistress, who lived about a league from the mill. He was not at all fond
of this commission, and would never linger an instant in her house after
her corn was weighed and measured.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

At this point of the tale the narrator stopped.

"Are you aware that I have been talking a long time?" said she to her
friends, who were listening. "My lungs are not so strong as they once
were, and I think that the hemp-dresser, who knows the story better than
I, might relieve me, especially as we have just come to a place that I
do not remember so well."

"I know why your memory is not so good in the middle as in the
beginning," answered the hemp-dresser. "It is because the waif is about
to get into trouble, and you cannot stand it, because you are
chicken-hearted about love stories, like all other pious women."

"Is this going to turn into a love story?" asked Sylvine Courtioux, who
happened to be present.

"Good!" replied the hemp-dresser. "I knew that if I let out that word,
all the young girls would prick up their ears. But you must have
patience; the part of the story which I am going to take up on condition
that I may carry it to a happy close is not yet what you want to hear.
Where had you come to, Mother Monique?"

"I had come to Blanchet's mistress."

"That was it," said the hemp-dresser. The woman was called Sévère, but
her name was not well suited to her, for there was nothing to match it
in her disposition. She was very clever about hoodwinking people when
she wanted to get money out of them. She cannot be called entirely bad,
for she was of a joyous, careless temper; but she thought only of
herself, and cared not at all for the loss of others, provided that she
had all the finery and recreation she wanted. She had been the fashion
in the country, and it was said that she had found many men to her
taste. She was still a very handsome, buxom woman, alert though stout,
and rosy as a cherry. She paid but little attention to the waif, and if
she met him in her barn or courtyard she made fun of him with some
nonsense or other, but without malicious intent and for the pleasure of
Seeing him blush; for he blushed like a girl, and was ill at ease
whenever she spoke to him. He thought her brazen, and she seemed both
ugly and wicked in his eyes, though she was neither one nor the other;
at least, she was only spiteful when she was crossed in her interests or
her vanity, and I must even acknowledge that she liked to give almost as
much as to receive. She was ostentatiously generous, and enjoyed being
thanked; but to the mind of the waif she was a devil, who reduced Madame
Blanchet to want and drudgery.

Nevertheless, it happened that when the waif was seventeen years old,
Madame Sévère discovered that he was a deucedly handsome fellow. He was
not like most country boys, who, at his age, are dumpy and thick-set,
and only develop into something worth looking at two or three years
later. He was already tall and well-built; his skin was white, even at
harvest-time, and his tight curling hair was brown at the roots and
golden at the ends.

"Do you admire that sort of thing, Madame Monique? I mean the hair,
without any reference to boys."

"That is no business of yours," answered the priest's servant. "Go on
with your story."

He was always poorly dressed, but he loved cleanliness, as Madeleine
Blanchet had taught him; and such as he was, he had an air that no one
else had. Sévère noticed this little by little, and finally she was so
well aware of it that she took it into her head to thaw him out a
little. She was not a woman of prejudice, and when she heard anybody
say, "What a pity that such a handsome boy should be a waif!" she
answered, "There is every reason that waifs should be handsome, for love
brought them into the world."

She devised the following plan for being in his company. She made
Blanchet drink immoderately at the fair of Saint-Denis-de-Jouhet, and
when she saw that he was no longer able to put one foot before the
other, she asked the friends she had in the place to put him to bed.
Then she said to François, who had come with his master to drive his
animals to the fair:

"My lad, I am going to leave my mare for your master to return with
to-morrow morning; you may mount his and take me home on the crupper."

This arrangement was not at all to François's taste. He said that the
mare that belonged to the mill was not strong enough to carry two
people, and he offered to accompany Sévère home, if she rode her own
horse and allowed him to ride Blanchet's. He promised to come back
immediately with a fresh mount for his master, and to reach
Saint-Denis-de-Jouhet early the next morning; but Sévère would listen
to him no more than the wind, and ordered him to obey her. François was
afraid of her; for, as Blanchet saw with no eyes but hers, she could
have him sent away from the mill if he displeased her, especially as the
feast of Saint-Jean was near at hand. So he took her up behind him,
without suspecting, poor fellow, that this was not the best means of
escaping his evil destiny.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER VIII


IT was twilight when they set out, and when they passed the sluice of
the pond of Rochefolle night had already fallen. The moon had not yet
risen above the trees, and in that part of the country the roads are so
washed by numerous springs that they are not at all good. François
spurred his mare on to speed, for he disliked the company of Sévère,
and longed to be with Madame Blanchet.

But Sévère, who was in no haste to reach home, began to play the part
of a fine lady, saying that she was afraid, and that the mare must not
go faster than a walk, because she did not lift her legs well and might
stumble at any minute.

"Bah!" said François without paying any attention; "then it would be
the first time she said her prayers, for I never saw a mare so
disinclined to piety!"

"You are witty, François," said Sévère giggling, as if François had
said something very new and amusing.

"Oh, no indeed!" answered the waif, who thought she was laughing at him.

"Come," said she, "you surely cannot mean to trot down-hill?"

"You need not fear, for we can trot perfectly well."

The trot down-hill stopped the stout Sévère's breath, and prevented
her talking. She was extremely vexed, as she had expected to coax the
young man with her soft words, but she was unwilling to let him see that
she was neither young nor slender enough to stand fatigue, and was
silent for a part of the way.

When they came to a chestnut grove, she took it into her head to say:

"Stop, François; you must stop, dear François. The mare has just lost
a shoe."

"Even if she has lost a shoe," said François, "I have neither hammer
nor nails to put it on with."

"But we must not lose the shoe. It is worth something! Get down, I say,
and look for it."

"I might look two hours for it, among these ferns, without finding it.
And my eyes are not lanterns."

"Oh, yes, François," said Sévère, half in jest and half in earnest;
"your eyes shine like glowworms."

"Then you can see them through my hat, I suppose?" answered François,
not at all pleased with what he took for derision.

"I cannot see them just now," said Sévère with a sigh as big as
herself; "but I have seen them at other times!"

"You can never have seen anything amiss in them," returned the innocent
waif. "You may as well leave them alone, for they have never looked
rudely at you and never will."

"I think," broke in at this moment the priest's servant, "that you might
skip this part of the story. It is not very interesting to hear all the
bad devices of this wicked woman, for ensnaring our waif."

"Put yourself at ease, Mother Monique," replied the hemp-dresser. "I
shall skip as much as is proper. I know that I am speaking before young
people, and I shall not say a word too much."

We were just speaking of François's eyes, the expression of which
Sévère was trying to make less irreproachable than he had declared it
to be.

"How old are you, François?" said she with more politeness, so as to
let him understand that she was no longer going to treat him like a
little boy.

"Oh, Heavens! I don't know exactly," answered the waif, beginning to
perceive her clumsy advances. "I do not often amuse myself by reckoning
my years."

"I heard that you were only seventeen," she resumed, "but I wager that
you must be twenty, for you are tall, and will soon have a beard on your
chin."

"It is all the same to me," said François, yawning.

"Take care! You are going too fast, my boy. There! I have just lost my
purse!"

"The deuce you have!" said François, who had not as yet discovered how
shy she was. "Then I suppose that you must get off and look for it, for
it maybe of value."

He jumped down and helped her to dismount. She took pains to lean
against him, and he found her heavier than a sack of corn.

While she pretended to search for the purse, which was all the time in
her pocket, he went on five or six steps, holding the mare by the
bridle.

"Are not you going to help me look for it?" said she.

"I must hold the mare," said he, "for she is thinking of her colt, and
if I let her loose she will run home."

Sévère looked under the mare's leg, close beside François, and from
this he saw that she had lost nothing except her senses.

"We had not come as far as this," said he, "when you called out that you
had lost your purse. So you certainly cannot find it here."

"Do you think I am shamming, you rogue?" said she, trying to pull his
ear; "for I really believe that you are a rogue."

François drew back, as he was in no mood for a frolic.

"No, no," said he, "if you have found your money, let us go, for I
should rather be asleep than stay here jesting."

"Then we can talk," said Sévère, when she was seated again behind him;
"they say that beguiles the weariness of the road."

"I need no beguiling," answered the waif, "for I am not weary."

"That is the first pretty speech you have made me, François!"

"If it is a pretty speech, I made it by accident, for I do not
understand that sort of thing."

Sévère was exasperated, but she would not as yet give in to the truth.

"The boy must be a simpleton," said she to herself. "If I make him lose
his way, he will have to stay a little longer with me."

So she tried to mislead him, and to induce him to turn to the left when
he was going to the right.

"You are making a mistake," said she; "this is the first time you have
been over this road. I know it better than you do. Take my advice, or
you will make me spend the night in the woods, young man!"

When François had once been over a road, he knew it so perfectly that
he could find his way in it at the end of a year.

"No, no," said he, "this is the right way, and I am not in the least out
of my head. The mare knows it too, and I have no desire to spend the
night rambling about the woods."

Thus he reached the farm of Dollins, where Sévère lived, without
losing a quarter of an hour and without giving an opening as wide as the
eye of a needle to her advances. Once there, she tried to detain him,
insisting that the night was dark, that the water had risen, and that he
would have difficulty in crossing the fords. The waif cared not a whit
for these dangers, and, bored with so many foolish words, he struck the
mare with his heels, galloped off without waiting to hear the rest, and
returned swiftly to the mill, where Madeleine Blanchet was waiting for
him, grieved that he should come so late.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER IX


THE waif never told Madeleine what Sévère had given him to understand;
he would not have dared, and indeed dared not even think of it himself.
I cannot say that I should have behaved as discreetly as he in such an
adventure; but a little discretion never does any harm, and then I am
telling things as they happened. This boy was as refined as a
well-brought-up girl.

As Madame Sévère thought over the matter at night, she became incensed
against him, and perceived that he had scorned her and was not the fool
she had taken him for. Chafing at this thought, her spleen rose, and
great projects of revenge passed through her head.

So much so that when Cadet Blanchet, still half drunk, returned to her
next morning, she gave him to understand that his mill-boy was a little
upstart, whom she had been obliged to hold in check and cuff in the
face, because he had taken it into his head to make love to her and kiss
her as they came home together through the wood at night.

This was more than enough to disorder Blanchet's wits; but she was not
yet satisfied, and jeered at him for leaving at home with his wife a
fellow who would be inclined by his age and character to beguile the
dullness of her life.

In the twinkling of an eye, Blanchet was jealous both of his mistress
and his wife. He seized his heavy stick, pulled his hat down over his
eyes, like an extinguisher on a candle, and rushed off to the mill,
without stopping for breath.

Fortunately, the waif was not there. He had gone away to fell and saw up
a tree that Blanchet had bought from Blanchard of Guérin, and was not
to return till evening. Blanchet would have gone to find him at his
work, but he shrank from showing his fury before the young millers of
Guérin, lest they should make sport of him for his jealousy, which was
unreasonable after his long neglect and contempt of his wife.

He would have stayed to wait for his return, but he thought it too
wearisome to stay all day at home, and he knew that the quarrel which he
wished to pick with his wife could not last long enough to occupy him
till evening. It is impossible to be angry very long when the ill-temper
is all on one side.

In spite of this, however, he could have endured all the derision and
the tedium for the pleasure of belaboring the poor waif; but as his walk
had cooled him to some degree, he reflected that this cursed waif was no
longer a child, and that if he were old enough to think of making love,
he was also old enough to defend himself with blows, if provoked. So he
tried to gather his wits together, drinking glass after glass in
silence, revolving in his brain what he was going to say to his wife,
but did not know how to begin.

He had said roughly, on entering, that he wished her to listen to
something; so she sat near him, as usual sad, silent, and with a tinge
of pride in her manner.

"Madame Blanchet," said he at last, "I have a command to give you, but
if you were the woman you pretend to be, and that you have the
reputation of being, you would not wait to be told."

There he halted as if to take breath, but the fact is that he was almost
ashamed of what he was going to say, for virtue was written on his
wife's face as plainly as a prayer in a missal.

Madeleine would not help him to explain himself. She did not breathe a
word, but waited for him to go on, expecting him to find fault with her
for some expenditure, for she had no suspicion of what he was
meditating.

"You behave as if you did not understand me, Madame Blanchet," continued
the miller, "and yet my meaning is clear. You must throw that rubbish
out of doors, the sooner the better, for I have had enough and too much
of all this sort of thing."

"Throw what?" asked Madeleine, in amazement.

"Throw what! Then you do not dare to say throw _whom_?"

"Good God! no; I know nothing about it," said she. "Speak, if you want
me to understand you."

"You will make me lose my temper," cried Cadet Blanchet, bellowing like
a bull. "I tell you that waif is not wanted in my house, and if he is
still here by to-morrow morning, I shall turn him out of doors by main
force, unless he prefer to take a turn under my mill-wheel."

"Your words are cruel, and your purpose is very foolish, Master
Blanchet," said Madeleine, who could not help turning as white as her
cap. "You will ruin your business if you send the boy away; for you will
never find another who will work so well, and be satisfied with such
small wages. What has the poor child done to make you want to drive him
away so cruelly?"

"He makes a fool of me, I tell you, Madame Wife, and I do not intend to
be the laughing-stock of the country. He has made himself master of my
house, and deserves to be paid with a cudgel for what he has done."

It was some time before Madeleine could understand what her husband
meant. She had not the slightest conception of it, and brought forward
all the reasons she could think of to appease him and prevent his
persisting in his caprice.

It was all labor lost, for he only grew the more furious; and when he
saw how grieved she was to lose her good servant François, he had a
fresh access of jealousy, and spoke so brutally that his meaning dawned
on her at last, and she began to cry from mortification, injured pride,
and bitter sorrow.

This did not mend matters; Blanchet swore that she was in love with this
bundle of goods from the asylum, that he blushed for her, and that if
she did not turn the waif out of doors without delay, he would kill him
and grind him to powder.

Thereupon she answered more haughtily than was her wont, that he had the
right to send away whom he chose from his house, but not to wound and
insult his faithful wife, and that she would complain to God and all the
saints of Heaven of his cruel and intolerable injustice. Thus, in spite
of herself, she came gradually to reproach him with his evil behavior,
and confronted him with the plain feet that if a man is dissatisfied
with his own cap, he tries to throw his neighbor's into the mud.

It went from bad to worse, and when Blanchet finally perceived that he
was in the wrong, anger was his only resource. He threatened to shut
Madeleine's mouth with a blow, and would have done so, if Jeannie had
not heard the noise and come running in between them, without
understanding what the matter was, but quite pale and discomfited by so
much wrangling. When Blanchet ordered him away, the child cried, and his
father took occasion to say that he was ill-brought-up, a cry-baby, and
a coward, and that his mother would never be able to make anything out
of him. Then Blanchet plucked up courage, and rose, brandishing his
stick, and swearing that he would kill the waif.

When Madeleine saw that he was mad with passion, she threw herself
boldly in front of him, and he, disconcerted and taken by surprise,
allowed her her way. She snatched his stick out of his hands and threw
it far off into the river, and then, standing her ground, she said:

"You shall not ruin yourself by obeying this wicked impulse. Reflect
that calamity is swift to follow a man who loses his self-control, and
if you have no feeling for others, think of yourself and the probable
consequences of a single bad action. For a long time you have been
guiding your life amiss, my husband, and now you are hastening faster
and faster along a dangerous road. I shall prevent you, at least for
to-day, from committing a worse crime, which would bring its punishment
both in this world and the next. You shall not kill; return to where you
came from, rather than persevere in trying to revenge yourself for an
affront which was not offered. Go away; I command you to do so in your
own interest, and this is the first time in my life that I have ever
commanded you to do anything. You will obey me, because you will see
that I still observe the deference I owe you. I swear to you on my word
and honor that the waif shall not be here to-morrow, and that you may
come back without any fear of meeting him."

Having said this, Madeleine opened the door of the house for her
husband, and Cadet Blanchet, baffled by the novelty of her manner, and
pleased in the main to receive her submission without danger to his
person, clapped his hat upon his head, and without another word, returned
to Sévère. He did not fail to boast to her and to others that he had
administered a sound thrashing to his wife and to the waif; but as this
was not true, Sévère's pleasure evaporated in smoke.

When Madeleine Blanchet was alone again, she sent Jeannie to drive the
sheep and the goat to pasture, and went off to a little lonely nook
beside the mill-dam, where the earth was much eaten away by the force of
the current, and the place so crowded with a fresh growth of branches
above the old tree-stumps that you could not see two steps away from
you. She was in the habit of going there to pray, for nobody could
interrupt her, and she could be as entirely concealed behind the tall
weeds as a water-hen in its nest of green leaves.

As soon as she reached there, she sank on her knees to seek in prayer
the relief she so needed. But though she hoped this would bring great
comfort, she could think of nothing but the poor waif, who was to be
sent sway, and who loved her so that he would die of grief. So nothing
came to her lips, except that she was most unhappy to lose her only
support and separate herself from the child of her heart. Then she cried
so long and so bitterly that she was suffocated, and, falling full
length along the grass, lay unconscious for more than an hour, and it is
a miracle that she ever came to herself.

At nightfall she made an effort to collect her powers; and when she
heard Jeannie come home singing with the flock, she rose with difficulty
and set about preparing supper. Shortly afterward, she heard the noise
of the return of the oxen, who were drawing home the oak-tree that
Blanchet had bought, and Jeannie ran joyfully to meet his friend
François, whose presence he had missed all day. Poor little Jeannie had
been grieved for a moment by his father's cruel behaviour to his dear
mother, and he had run off to cry in the fields, without knowing what
the quarrel could be. But a child's sorrow lasts no longer than the dew
of the morning, and he had already forgotten his trouble. He took
François by the hand, and skipping as gaily as a little partridge,
brought him to Madeleine.

There was no need for the waif to look twice to see that her eyes were
reddened and her face blanched.

"Good God," thought he, "some misfortune has happened." Then he turned
pale too, and trembled, fixing his eyes on Madeleine, and expecting her
to speak to him. She made him sit down, and set his meal before him in
silence, but he could not swallow a mouthful. Jeannie eat and prattled
on by himself; he felt no uneasiness, for his mother kissed him from
time to time and encouraged him to make a good supper.

When he had gone to bed, and the servant was putting the room in order,
Madeleine went out, and beckoned François to follow her. She walked
through the meadow as far as the fountain, and then calling all her
courage to her aid, she said:

"My child, misfortune has fallen upon you and me, and God strikes us
both a heavy blow. You see how much I suffer, and out of love for me,
try to strengthen your own heart, for if you do not uphold me, I cannot
tell what will become of me."

François guessed nothing, although he at once supposed that the trouble
came from Monsieur Blanchet.

"What are you saying?" said he to Madeleine, kissing her hands as if she
were his mother. "How can you think that I shall not have courage to
comfort and sustain you? Am not I your servant for as long as I have to
stay upon the earth? Am not I your child, who will work for you, and is
now strong enough to keep you from want. Leave Monsieur Blanchet alone,
let him squander his money, since it is his choice. I shall feed and
clothe both you and our Jeannie. If I must leave you for a time, I shall
go and hire myself out, though not far from here, so that I can see you
every day, and come and spend Sundays with you. I am strong enough now
to work and earn all the money you need. You are so careful and live on
so little. Now you will not be able to deny yourself so many things for
others, and you will be the better for it. Come, Madame Blanchet, my
dear mother, calm yourself and do not cry, or I think I shall die of
grief."

When Madeleine saw that he had not understood, and that she must tell
him everything, she commended her soul to God, and made up her mind to
inflict this great pain upon him.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER X


"NO, François, my son," said she, "that is not it. My husband is not
yet ruined, as far as I know anything of his affairs, and if it were
only the fear of want, you would not see me so unhappy. Nobody need
dread poverty who has courage to work. Since you must hear why it is
that I am so sick at heart, let me tell you that Monsieur Blanchet is in
a fury against you, and will no longer endure your presence in his
house."

"Is that it?" cried François, springing up. "He may as well kill me
outright, as I cannot live after such a blow. Yes, let him put an end to
me, for he has long disliked me and longed to have me die, I know. Let
me see, where is he? I will go to him and say, 'Tell me why you drive me
away, and perhaps I can prove to you that you are mistaken in your
reasons. But if you persist, say so, that--that--' I do not know what I
am saying, Madeleine; truly, I do not know; I have lost my senses, and I
can no longer see clearly; my heart is pierced and my head is turning I
am sure I shall either die or go mad."

The poor waif threw himself on the ground, and struck his head with his
fists, as he had done when Zabelle had tried to take him back to the
asylum.

When Madeleine saw this, her high spirit returned. She took him by the
hands and arms, and shaking him, forced him to listen to her.

"If you have no more resignation and strength of will than a child,"
said she, "you do not deserve my love, and you will shame me for
bringing you up as my son. Get up. You are a man in years, and a man
should not roll on the ground, as you are doing. Listen, François, and
tell me whether you love me enough to go without seeing me for a time.
Look, my child, it is for my peace and good name, for otherwise my
husband will subject me to annoyance and humiliation. So you must leave
me to-day, out of love, just as I have kept you, out of love, to this
day; for love shows itself in different ways according to time and
circumstance. You must leave me without delay, because, in order to
prevent Monsieur Blanchet from committing a crime, I promised that you
should be gone to-morrow morning. To-morrow is Saint John's day, and you
must go and find a place; but not too near at hand, for if we were able
to see each other every day, it would be all the worse in Monsieur
Blanchet's mind."

"What has he in his mind, Madeleine? Of what does he complain? How have
I behaved amiss? Does he think that you rob the house to help me? That
cannot be, because now I am one of his household. I eat only enough to
satisfy my hunger, and I do not steal a pin from him. Perhaps he thinks
that I take my wages, and that I cost him too much. Very well, let me
follow out my purpose of going to explain to him that since my poor
mother Zabelle died, I have never received a single penny; or, if you do
not want me to tell him this,--and indeed if he knew it, he would try to
make you pay back all the money due on my wages that you have spent in
charity--well, I will make him this proposition for the next year. I
will offer to remain in your service for nothing. In this way he cannot
think me a burden, and will allow me to stay with you."

"No, no, no, François," cried Madeleine, hastily, "it is not possible;
and if you said this to him, he would fly into such a rage with you and
me that worse would come of it."

"But why?" asked François; "what is he angry about? Is it only for the
pleasure of making us unhappy that he pretends to mistrust me?"

"My child, do not ask the reason of his anger for I cannot tell you. I
should be too much ashamed, and you had better not even try to guess;
but I can assure you that your duty toward me is to go away. You are
tall and strong, and can do without me; and you will earn your living
better elsewhere, as long as you will take nothing from me. All sons
have to leave their mothers when they go out to work, and many go far
away. You must go like the rest, and I shall grieve as all mothers do. I
shall weep for you and think of you, and pray God morning and evening to
shield you from all ill."

"Yes, and you will take another servant who will serve you ill, who will
take no care of your son or your property, who will perhaps hate you, if
Monsieur Blanchet orders him not to obey you, and will repeat and
misrepresent to him all the kind things you do. You may be unhappy, and
I shall not be with you to protect and comfort you. Ah! you think that I
have no courage because I am miserable? You believe that I am thinking
only of myself, and tell me that I shall earn more money elsewhere! I am
not thinking of myself at all. What is it to me whether I gain or lose?
I do not even care to know whether I shall be able to control my
despair. I shall live or die as may please God, and it makes no
difference to me, as long as I am prevented from devoting my life to
you. What gives me intolerable anguish is that I see trouble ahead for
you. You will be trampled upon in your turn, and if Monsieur Blanchet
puts me out of the way, it is that he may the more easily walk over your
rights."

"Even if God permits this," said Madeleine, "I must bear what I cannot
help. It is wrong to make one's fate worse by kicking against the
pricks. You know that I am very unhappy, and you may imagine how much
more wretched I should be if I learned that you were ill, disgusted with
life, and unwilling to be comforted. But if I can find any consolation
in my affliction, it will be because I hear that you are well behaved,
and keep up your health and courage out of love for me."

This last excellent reason gave Madeleine the advantage. The waif gave
in, and promised on his knees, as if in the confessional, that he would
do his best to bear his sorrow bravely.

"Then," said he, as he wiped his eyes, "if I must go to-morrow morning,
I shall say good-by to you now, my mother Madeleine. Farewell, for this
life, perhaps; for you do not tell me if I shall ever see you and talk
with you again. If you do not think I shall ever have such happiness, do
not say so, for I should lose courage to live. Let me keep the hope of
meeting you one day here by this clear fountain, where I met you the
first time nearly eleven years ago. From that day to this, I have had
nothing but happiness; I must not forget all the joys that God has given
me through you, but shall keep them in remembrance, so that they may
help me to bear, from to-morrow onward, all that time and fate may
bring. I carry away a heart pierced and benumbed with anguish, knowing
that you are unhappy, and that in me you lose your best friend. You tell
me that your distress will be greater if I do not take heart, so I shall
sustain myself as best I may, by thoughts of you, and I value your
affection too much to forfeit it by cowardice. Farewell, Madame
Blanchet; leave me here alone a little while; I shall feel better when I
have cried my fill. If any of my tears fall into this fountain, you will
think of me whenever you come to wash here. I am going to gather some of
this mint to perfume my linen. I must soon pack my bundle; and as long
as I smell the sweet fragrance among my clothes, I shall imagine that I
am here and see you before me. Farewell, farewell, my dear mother; I
shall not go back with you to the house. I might kiss little Jeannie,
without waking him, but I have not the heart. You must kiss him for me;
and to keep him from crying, please tell him to-morrow that I am coming
back soon. So, while he is expecting me, he will have time to forget me
a little; and then later, you must talk to him of poor François, so
that he may not forget me too much. Give me your blessing, Madeleine, as
you gave it to me on the day of my first communion, for it will bring
with it the grace of God."

The poor waif knelt down before Madeleine, entreating her to forgive him
if he had ever offended her against his will.

Madeleine declared that she had nothing to forgive him, and that she
wished her blessing could prove as beneficent as that of God.

"Now," said François, "that I am again a waif, and that nobody will
ever love me any more, will not you kiss me as you once kissed me, in
kindness, on the day of my first communion? I shall need to remember
this, so that I may be very sure that you still love me in your heart,
like a mother."

Madeleine kissed the waif in the same pure spirit as when he was a
little child. Yet anybody who had seen her would have fancied there was
some justification for Monsieur Blanchet's anger, and would have blamed
this faithful woman, who had no thought of ill, and whose action could
not have displeased the Virgin Mary.


"Nor me, either," put in the priest's servant.

"And me still less," returned the hemp-dresser. Then he resumed:


She returned to the house, but not to sleep. She heard François come in
and do up his bundle in the next room, and she heard him go out again at
daybreak. She did not get up till he had gone some little distance, so
as not to weaken his courage, but when she heard his steps on the little
bridge, she opened the door a crack, without allowing herself to be
seen, so that she might catch one more last glimpse of him. She saw him
stop and look back at the river and mill, as if to bid them farewell.
Then he strode away very rapidly, after first picking a branch of poplar
and putting it in his hat, as men do when they go out for hire, to show
that they are trying to find a place.

Master Blanchet came in toward noon, but did not speak till his wife
said:

"You must go out and hire another boy for your mill, for François has
gone, and you are without a servant."

"That is quite enough, wife," answered Blanchet. "I shall go, but I warn
you not to expect another young fellow."

As these were all the thanks he gave her for her submission, her
feelings were so much wounded that she could not help showing it.

"Cadet Blanchet," said she, "I have obeyed your will; I have sent an
excellent boy away without a motive, and I must confess that I did so
with regret. I do not ask for your gratitude, but, in my turn, I have
something to command you, and that is not to insult me, for I do not
deserve it."

She said this in a manner so new to Blanchet, that it produced its
effect on him.

"Come, wife," said he, holding out his hand to her, "let us make a truce
to all this, and think no more about it. Perhaps I may have been a
little hasty in what I said; but you see I had my own reasons for not
trusting the waif. The devil is the father of all those children, and he
is always after them. They may be good in some ways, but they are sure
to be scamps in others. I know that it will be hard for me to find
another such hard worker for a servant; but the devil, who is a good
father, had whispered wantonness into that boy's ear, and I know one
woman who had a complaint against him."

"That woman is not your wife," rejoined Madeleine, "and she may be
lying. Even if she told the truth, that would be no cause for suspecting
me."

"Do I suspect you?" said Blanchet, shrugging his shoulders. "My grudge
was only against him, and now that he has gone, I have forgotten about
it. If I said anything displeasing to you, you must take it in jest."

"Such jests are not to my taste," answered Madeleine. "Keep them for
those who like them."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XI


MADELEINE bore her sorrow very well at first. She heard from her new
servant, who had met with François, that he had been hired for eighteen
pistoles a year by a farmer, who had a good mill and some land over
toward Aigurande. She was happy to know that he had found a good place,
and did her utmost to return to her occupations, without grieving too
much. In spite of her efforts, however, she fell ill for a long time of
a low fever, and pined quietly away, without anybody's noticing it.
François was right when he said that in him she lost her best friend.
She was sad and lonely, and, having nobody to talk with, she petted all
the more her son Jeannie, who was a very nice boy, as gentle as a lamb.

But he was too young to understand all that she had to say of François,
and, besides, he showed her no such kind cares and attentions as the
waif had done at his age. Jeannie loved his mother, more even than
children ordinarily do, because she was such a mother as is hard to
find; but he never felt the same wonder and emotion about her as
François did. He thought it quite natural to be so tenderly loved and
caressed. He received it as his portion, and counted on it as his due,
whereas the waif had never been unmindful of the slightest kindness from
her, and made his gratitude so apparent in his behavior, his words and
looks, his blushes and tears, that when Madeleine was with him she
forgot that her home was bereft of peace, love, and comfort.

When she was left again forlorn, all this evil returned upon her, and
she meditated long on the sorrows which François's affectionate
companionship had kept in abeyance. Now she had nobody to read with her,
to help her in caring for the poor, to pray with her, or even now and
then to exchange a few frank, good-natured jests with her. Nothing that
she saw or did gave her any more pleasure, and her thoughts wandered
back to the time when she had with her such a kind, gentle, and loving
friend. Whether she went into her vineyard, into her orchard, or into
the mill, there was not a spot as large as a pocket-handkerchief, that
she had not passed over ten thousand times, with this child clinging to
her skirts, or this faithful, zealous friend at her side. It was as if
she had lost a son of great worth and promise; and it was in vain she
heaped her affection on the one who still remained, for half her heart
was left untenanted.

Her husband saw that she was wearing away, and felt some pity for her
languid, melancholy looks. He feared lest she might fall seriously ill,
and was loath to lose her, as she was a skilful manager, and saved on
her side as much as he wasted on his. As Sévère would not allow him to
attend to his mill, he knew that his business would go to pieces if
Madeleine no longer had the charge of it, and though he continued to
upbraid her from habit, and complained of her lack of care, he knew that
nobody else would serve him better.

He exerted himself to contrive some means of curing her of her sickness
and sorrow, and just at this juncture it happened that his uncle died.
His youngest sister had been under this uncle's guardianship, and now
she fell into his own care. He thought, at first, of sending the girl to
live with Sévère, but his other relations made him ashamed of this
project; and, besides, when Sévère found that the girl was only just
fifteen, and promised to be as fair as the day, she had no further
desire to be intrusted with such a charge, and told Blanchet that she
was afraid of the risks attendant on the care of a young girl.

So Blanchet--who saw that he should gain something by being his sister's
guardian, as the uncle, who had brought her up, had left her money in
his will; and who was unwilling to place her with any of his other
relations--brought her home to his mill, and requested his wife to treat
her as a sister and companion, to teach her to work, and let her share
in the household labors, and yet to make the task so easy that she
should have no desire to go elsewhere.

Madeleine acquiesced gladly in this family arrangement. She liked
Mariette Blanchet from the first for the sake of her beauty, the very
cause for which Sévère had disliked her. She believed, too, that a
sweet disposition and a good heart always go with a pretty face, and she
received the young girl not so much as a sister as a daughter, who might
perhaps take the place of poor François.

During all this time poor François bore his trouble with as much
patience as he had, and this was none at all; for never was man nor boy
visited with so heavy an affliction. He fell ill, in the first place,
and this was almost fortunate for him, for it proved the kindness of his
master's family, who would not allow him to be sent to the hospital, but
kept him at home, and tended him carefully. The miller, his present
master, was most unlike Cadet Blanchet, and his daughter, who was about
thirty years old, and not yet married, had a reputation for her
charities and good conduct.

These good people plainly saw, too, in spite of the waif's illness, that
they had found a treasure in him.

He was so strong and well-built that he threw off his disease more
quickly than most people, and though he set to work before he was cured,
he had no relapse. His conscience spurred him on to make up for lost
time and repay his master and mistress for their kindness. He still felt
ill for more than two months, and every morning, when he began his work,
he was as giddy as if he had just fallen from the roof of a house, but
little by little he warmed up to it, and never told the trouble it cost
him to begin. The miller and his daughter were so well pleased with him
that they intrusted him with the management of many things which were
far above his position. When they found that he could read and write,
they made him keep the accounts, which had never been kept before, and
the need of which had often involved the mill in difficulties. In short,
he was as well off as was compatible with his misfortune; and as he had
the prudence to refrain from saying that he was a foundling, nobody
reproached him with his origin.

But neither the kind treatment he received, nor his work, nor his
illness, could make him forget Madeleine, his dear mill at Cormouer, his
little Jeannie, and the graveyard where Zabelle was lying. His heart was
always far away, and on Sundays he did nothing but brood, and so had no
rest from the labors of the week. He was at such a distance from his
home, which was more than six leagues off, that no news from it ever
reached him. He thought at first that he would become used to this, but
he was consumed with anxiety, and tried to invent means of finding out
about Madeleine, at least twice a year. He went to the fairs for the
purpose of meeting some acquaintance from the old place, and if he saw
one, he made inquiries about all his friends, beginning prudently with
those for whom he cared least, and leading up to Madeleine, who
interested him most; and thus he had some tidings of her and her family.

"But it is growing late, my friends, and I am going to sleep in the
middle of my story. I shall go on with it to-morrow, if you care to hear
it Good night, all."

The hemp-dresser went off to bed, and the farmer lit his lantern and
took Mother Monique back to the parsonage, for she was an old woman, and
could not see her way clearly.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XII


THE next evening we all met again at the farm, and the hemp-dresser
resumed his story:


François had been living about three years in the country of Aigurande,
near Villechiron, in a handsome mill which is called Haut-Champault, or
Bas-Champault, or Frechampault, for Champault is as common a name in
that country as in our own. I have been twice into those parts, and know
what a fine country it is. The peasants there are richer, and better
lodged and fed; there is more business there, and though the earth is
less fertile, it is more productive. The land is more broken; it is
pierced by rocks and washed by torrents, but it is fair and pleasant to
the eye. The trees are marvelously beautiful, and two streams, clear as
crystal, rush noisily along through their deep-cut channels.

The mills there are more considerable than ours, and the one where
François lived was among the richest and best. One winter day, his
master, by name Jean Vertaud, said to him:

"François, my servant and friend, I have something to say to you, and I
ask for your attention.

"You and I have known each other for some little time. I have done very
well in my business, and my mill has prospered; I have succeeded better
than others of my trade; in short, my fortune has increased, and I do
not conceal from myself that I owe it all to you. You have served me not
as a servant, but as a friend and relation. You have devoted yourself to
my interests as if they were your own. You have managed my property
better than I knew how to do myself, and have shown yourself possessed
of more knowledge and intelligence than I. I am not suspicious by
nature, and I should have been often cheated if you had not kept watch
of all the people and things about me. Those who were in the habit of
abusing my good nature, complained, and you bore the brunt boldly,
though more than once you exposed yourself to dangers, which you escaped
only by your courage and gentleness. What I like most about you is that
your heart is as good as your head and hand. You love order, but not
avarice. You do not allow yourself to be duped, as I do, and yet you are
as fond of helping your neighbor as I can be. You were the first to
advise me to be generous in real cases of need, but you were quick to
hold me back from giving to those who were merely making a pretense of
distress. You have sense and originality. The ideas you put into
practice are always successful, and whatever you touch turns to good
account.

"I am well pleased with you, and I should like, on my part, to do
something for you. Tell me frankly what you want, for I shall refuse you
nothing."

"I do not know why you say this," answered François. "You must think,
Master Vertaud, that I am dissatisfied with you, but it is not so. You
may be sure of that."

"I do not say that you are dissatisfied, but you do not generally look
like a happy man. Your spirits are not good. You never laugh and jest,
nor take any amusement. You are as sober as if you were in mourning for
somebody."

"Do you blame me for this, master? I shall never be able to please you
in this respect, for I am fond neither of the bottle nor of the dance; I
go neither to the tavern nor to balls; I know no funny stories nor
nonsense. I care for nothing which might distract me from my duty."

"You deserve to be held in high esteem for this, my boy, and I am not
going to blame you for it. I mention it, because I believe that there is
something on your mind. Perhaps you think that you are taking a great
deal of trouble on behalf of other people, and are but poorly paid for
it."

"You are wrong in thinking so, Master Vertaud. My reward is as great as
I could wish, and perhaps I could never have found elsewhere the high
wages which you are willing to allow me, of your own free will, and
without any urging from me. You have increased them, too, every year,
and, on Saint John's day last, you fixed them at a hundred crowns, which
is a very large price for you to pay. If you suffer any inconvenience
from it, I assure you that I should gladly relinquish it."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XIII


"COME, come, François, we do not understand each other," returned
Master Jean Vertaud; "and I do not know how to take you. You are no
fool, and I think my hints have been broad enough; but you are so shy
that I will help you out still further. Are not you in love with some
girl about here?"

"No, master," was the waif's honest answer.

"Truly?"

"I give you my word."

"Don't you know one who might please you, if you were able to pay your
court to her?"

"I have no desire to marry."

"What an idea! You are too young to answer for that. What's your
reason?"

"My reason? Do you really care to know, master?"

"Yes, because I feel an interest in you."

"Then I will tell you; there is no occasion for me to hide it: I have
never known father or mother. And there is something I have never told
you; I was not obliged to do so; but if you had asked me, I should have
told you the truth: I am a waif; I come from the foundling asylum."

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Jean Vertaud, somewhat taken aback by this
confession. "I should never have thought it."

"Why should you never have thought it? You do not answer, Master
Vertaud. Very well, I shall answer for you. You saw that I was a good
fellow, and you could not believe that a waif could be like that. It is
true, then, that nobody has confidence in waifs, and that there is a
prejudice against them. It is not just or humane; but since such a
prejudice exists, everybody must conform to it, and the best people are
not exempt, since you yourself--"

"No, no," said Master Vertaud, with a revulsion of feeling, for he was a
just man, and always ready to abjure a false notion; "I do not wish to
fail in justice, and if I forgot myself for a moment, you must forgive
me, for that is all past now. So, you think you cannot marry, because
you were born a waif?"

"Not at all, master; I do not consider that an obstacle. There are all
sorts of women, and some of them are so kind-hearted that my misfortune
might prove an inducement."

"That is true," cried Jean Vertaud. "Women are better than we are. Yet,"
he continued, with a laugh, "a fine handsome fellow like you, in the
flower of youth, and without any defect of body or mind, might very well
add a zest to the pleasure of being charitable. But come, give me your
reason."

"Listen," said François. "I was taken from the asylum and nursed by a
woman whom I never knew. At her death I was intrusted to another woman,
who received me for the sake of the slender pittance granted by the
government to those of my kind; but she was good to me, and when I was
so unfortunate as to lose her, I should never have been comforted but
for the help of another woman, who was the best of the three, and whom I
still love so much, that I am unwilling to live for any other woman but
her. I have left her, and perhaps I may never see her again, for she is
well off, and may never have need of me. Still, her husband has had many
secret expenses, and I have heard that he has been ill since autumn, so
it may be that he will die before long, and leave her with more debts
than property. If this happened, master, I do not deny that I should
return to the place she lives in, and that my only care and desire would
be to assist her and her son, and keep them from poverty by my toil.
That is my reason for not undertaking any engagement which would bind me
elsewhere. You employ me by the year, but if I married, I should be tied
for life. I should be assuming too many duties at once. If I had a wife
and children, it is not to be supposed that I could earn enough bread
for two families; neither is it to be supposed, if, by extraordinary
luck, I found a wife with some money of her own, that I should have the
right to deprive my house of its comforts, to bestow them upon
another's. Thus I expect to remain a bachelor. I am young, and have time
enough before me; but if some fancy for a girl should enter my head, I
should try to get rid of it; because, do you see, there is but one woman
in the world for me, and that is my mother Madeleine, who never despised
me for being a waif, but brought me up as her own child."

"Is that it?" answered Jean Vertaud. "My dear fellow, what you tell me
only increases my esteem for you. Nothing is so ugly as ingratitude, and
nothing so beautiful as the memory of benefits received. I may have some
good reasons for showing you that you could many a young woman of the
same mind as yourself, who would join you in aiding your old friend, but
they are reasons which I must think over, and I must ask somebody else's
opinion."

No great cleverness was necessary to guess that Jean Vertaud, with his
honest heart and sound judgment, had conceived of a marriage between his
daughter and François. His daughter was comely, and though she was
somewhat older than François, she had money enough to make up the
difference. She was an only child, and a fine match, but up to this
time, to her father's great vexation, she had refused to marry. He had
observed lately that she thought a great deal of François, and had
questioned her about him, but as she was a very reserved person, he had
some difficulty in extorting any confession from her. Finally, without
giving a positive answer, she consented to allow her father to sound
François on the subject of marriage, and awaited the result with more
uneasiness than she cared to show.

Jean Vertaud was disappointed that he had not a more satisfactory answer
to carry to her; first, because he was so anxious to have her married,
and next, because he could not wish for a better son-in-law than
François. Besides the affection he felt for him, he saw clearly that
the poor boy who had come to him was worth his weight in gold, on
account of his intelligence, his quickness at his work, and his good
conduct.

The young woman was a little pained to hear that François was a
foundling. She was a trifle proud, but she made up her mind quickly, and
her liking became more pronounced when she learned that François was
backward in love. Women go by contraries, and if François had schemed
to obtain indulgence for the irregularity of his birth, he could have
contrived no more artful device that that of showing a distaste toward
marriage.

So it happened that Jean Vertaud's daughter decided in François's
favor, that day, for the first time.

"Is that all?" said she to her father. "Doesn't he think that we should
have both the desire and the means to aid an old woman and find a
situation for her son? He cannot have understood your hints, father, for
if he knew it was a question of entering our family, he would have felt
no such anxiety."

That evening, when they were at work, Jeannette Vertaud said to
François:

"I have always had a high opinion of you, François; but it is still
higher now that my father has told me of your affection for the woman
who brought you up, and for whom you wish to work all your life. It is
right for you to feel so. I should like to know the woman, so that I
might serve her in case of need, because you have always been so fond of
her. She must be a fine woman."

"Oh! yes," said François, who was pleased to talk of Madeleine, "she is
a woman with a good heart, a woman with a heart like yours."

Jeannette Vertaud was delighted at this, and, thinking herself sure of
what she wanted, went on:

"If she should turn out as unfortunate as you fear, I wish she could
come and live with us. I should help you take care of her, for I suppose
that she is no longer young. Is not she infirm?"

"Infirm? No," said François; "she is not old enough to be infirm."

"Then is she still young?" asked Jeannette Vertaud, beginning to prick
up her ears.

"Oh! no, she is not young," answered François, simply. "I do not
remember how old she is now. She was a mother to me, and I never thought
of her age."

"Was she attractive?" asked Jeannette, after hesitating a moment before
putting the question.

"Attractive?" said François, with some surprise; "do you mean to ask if
she is a pretty woman? She is pretty enough for me just as she is; but
to tell the truth, I never thought of that. What difference can it make
in my affection for her? She might be as ugly as the devil, without my
finding it out."

"But cannot you tell me about how old she is?"

"Wait a minute. Her son was five years younger than I. Well! She is not
old, but she is not very young; she is about like--"

"Like me?" said Jeannette, making a slight effort to laugh. "In that
case, if she becomes a widow, it will be too late for her to marry
again, will it not?"

"That depends on circumstances," replied François. "If her husband has
not wasted all the property, she would have plenty of suitors. There are
fellows, who would marry their great-aunts as wittingly as their
great-nieces, for money."

"Then you have no esteem for those who marry for money?"

"I could not do it," answered François.

Simple-hearted as the waif was, he was no such simpleton as not to
understand the insinuations which had been made him, and he did not
speak without meaning. But Jeannette would not take the hint, and fell
still deeper in love with him. She had had many admirers, without paying
attention to any of them, and now the only one who pleased her, turned
his back on her. Such is the logical temper of a woman's mind.

François observed during the following days that she had something on
her mind, for she ate scarcely anything, and her eyes were always fixed
on him, whenever she thought he was not looking. Her attachment pained
him. He respected this good woman, and saw that the more indifferent he
appeared, the more she cared about him; but he had no fancy for her, and
if he had tried to cultivate such a feeling, it would have been the
result of duty and principle rather than of spontaneous affection.

He reflected that he could not stay much longer with Jean Vertaud,
because he knew that, sooner or later, such a condition of affairs must
necessarily give rise to some unfortunate difference.

Just at this time, however, an incident befell which changed the current
of his thoughts.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XIV


ONE morning the parish priest of Aigurande came strolling over to Jean
Vertaud's mill, and wandered round the place for some time before
espying François, whom he found at last in a corner of the garden. He
assumed a very confidential air, and asked him if he were indeed
François, surnamed Strawberry, a name that had been given him in the
civil register--where he had been inscribed as a foundling--on account
of a certain mark on his left arm. The priest then inquired concerning
his exact age, the name of the woman who had nursed him, the places in
which he had lived; in short, all that he knew of his birth and life.

François produced his papers, and the priest seemed to be entirely
satisfied.

"Very well," said he, "you may come this evening or to-morrow morning to
the parsonage; but you must not let anybody know what I am going to tell
you, for I am forbidden to make it public, and it is a matter of
conscience with me."

When François went to the parsonage, the priest carefully shut the
doors of the room, and drawing four little bits of thin paper from his
desk, said:

"François Strawberry, there are four thousand francs that your mother
sends you. I am forbidden to tell you her name, where she lives, or
whether she is alive or dead at the present moment. A pious thought has
induced her to remember you, and it appears that she always intended to
do so, since she knew where you were to be found, although you lived at
such a distance. She knew that your character was good, and gives you
enough to establish yourself with in life, on condition that for six
months you never mention this gift, unless it be to the woman you want
to marry. She enjoins me to consult with you on the investment or the
safe deposit of this money, and begs me to lend my name, in case it is
necessary, in order to keep the affair secret. I shall do as you like in
this respect; but I am ordered to deliver you the money, only in
exchange for your word of honor that you will neither say nor do
anything that might divulge the secret. I know that I may count upon
your good faith; will you pledge it to me?"

François gave his oath and left the money in the priest's charge,
begging him to lay it out to the best advantage, for he knew this priest
to be a good man; and some priests are like some women, either all good
or all bad.

The waif returned home rather sad than glad. He thought of his mother,
and would have been glad to give up the four thousand francs for the
privilege of seeing and embracing her. He imagined, too, that perhaps
she had just died, and that her gift was the result of one of those
impulses which come to people at the point of death; and it made him
still more melancholy to be unable to bear mourning for her and have
masses said for her soul. Whether she were dead or alive, he prayed God
to forgive her for forsaking her child, as her child forgave her with
his whole heart, and prayed to be forgiven his sins in like manner.

He tried to appear the same as usual; but for more than a fortnight, he
was so absorbed in a reverie at meal-times that the attention of the
Vertauds was excited.

"That young man does not confide in us," observed the miller. "He must
be in love."

"Perhaps it is with me," thought the daughter, "and he is too modest to
confess it. He is afraid that I shall think him more attracted by my
money than my person, so he is trying to prevent our guessing what is on
his mind."

Thereupon, she set to work to cure him of his shyness, and encouraged
him so frankly and sweetly in her words and looks, that he was a little
touched in spite of his preoccupation.

Occasionally, he said to himself that he was rich enough to help
Madeleine in case of need, and that he could well afford to marry a girl
who laid no claim to his fortune. He was not in love with any woman, but
he saw Jeannette Vertaud's good qualities, and was afraid of being
hard-hearted if he did not respond to her advances. At times he pitied
her, and was almost ready to console her.

But all at once, on a journey which he made to Crevant on his master's
business, he met a forester from Presles, who told him of Cadet
Blanchet's death, adding that he had left his affairs in great disorder,
and that nobody knew whether his widow would be able to right them.

François had no cause to love or regret Master Blanchet, yet his heart
was so tender that when he heard the news his eyes were moist and his
head heavy, as if he were about to weep; he knew that Madeleine was
weeping for her husband at that very moment, that she forgave him
everything, and remembered only that he was the father of her child. The
thought of Madeleine's grief awoke his own, and obliged him to weep with
her over the sorrow which he was sure was hers.

His first impulse was to leap upon his horse and hasten to her side; but
he reflected that it was his duty to ask permission of his master.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XV


"MASTER," said he to Jean Vertaud, "I must leave you for a time; how
long I cannot tell. I have something to attend to near my old home, and
I request you to let me go with a good will; for, to tell the truth, if
you refuse to give your permission, I shall not be able to obey you, but
shall go in spite of you. Forgive me for stating the case plainly. I
should be very sorry to vex you, and that is why I ask you as a reward
for all the services that I may have been able to render you, not to
take my behavior amiss, but to forgive the offense of which I am guilty,
in leaving your work so suddenly. I may return at the end of a week, if
I am not needed in the place where I am going; but I may not come back
till late in the year, or not at all, for I am unwilling to deceive you.
However, I shall do my best to come to your assistance if you need me,
or if anything were to occur which you cannot manage without me. Before
I go, I shall find you a good workman to take my place, and, if
necessary, offer him as an inducement all that is due on my wages since
Saint John's day last. Thus I can arrange matters without loss to you,
and you must shake hands to wish me good luck, and to ease my mind of
some of the regret I feel at parting with you."

Jean Vertaud knew that the waif seldom asked for anything, but that when
he did, his will was so firm that neither God nor the devil could bend
it.

"Do as you please, my boy," said he, shaking hands with him. "I should
not tell the truth if I said I did not care; but rather than have a
quarrel with you, I should consent to anything."

François spent the next day in looking up a servant to take his place
in the mill, and he met with a zealous, upright man who was returning
from the army, and was happy to find work and good wages under a good
master; for Jean Vertaud was recognized as such, and was known never to
have wronged anybody.

Before setting out, as he intended to do at daybreak the next day,
François wished to take leave of Jeannette Vertaud at supper-time. She
was sitting at the barn door, saying that her head ached and that she
could not eat. He observed that she had been weeping, and felt much
troubled in mind. He did not know how to thank her for her kindness, and
yet tell her that he was to leave her in spite of it. He sat down beside
her on the stump of an alder-tree, which happened to be there, and
struggled to speak, without being able to think of a single word to say.
She saw all this, without looking up, and pressed her handkerchief to
her eyes. He made a motion to take her hand in his and comfort her, but
drew back as it occurred to him that he could not conscientiously tell
her what she wanted to hear. When poor Jeannette found that he remained
silent, she was ashamed of her own sorrow, and rising quietly without
showing any bitterness of feeling, she went into the barn to weep
unrestrained.

She lingered there a little while, in the hope that he would make up his
mind to follow her and say a kind word, but he forbore, and went to his
supper, which he ate in melancholy silence.

It would be false to say that he had felt nothing for Jeannette when he
saw her in tears. His heart was a little fluttered, as he reflected how
happy he might be with a person of so excellent a disposition, who was
so fond of him, and who was not personally disagreeable to him. But he
shook off all these ideas when it returned to his mind that Madeleine
might stand in need of a friend, adviser, and servant, and that when he
was but a poor, forsaken child, wasted with fever, she had endured,
worked, and braved more for him than anybody else in the world.

"Come," said he to himself, when he woke next morning before the dawn;
"you must not think of a love-affair or your own happiness and
tranquillity. You would gladly forget that you are a waif, and would
throw your past to the winds, as so many others do, who seize the moment
as it flies, without looking behind them. Yes, but think of Madeleine
Blanchet, who entreats you not to forget her, but to remember what she
did for you. Forward, then; and Jeannette, may God help you to a more
gallant lover than your humble servant."

Such were his reflections as he passed beneath the window of his kind
mistress, and if the season had been propitious, he would have left a
leaf or flower against her casement, in token of farewell; but it was
the day after the feast of the Epiphany; the ground was covered with
snow, and there was not a leaf on the trees nor a violet in the grass.

He thought of knotting into the corner of a white handkerchief the bean
which he had won the evening before in the Twelfth-night cake, and of
tying the handkerchief to the bars of Jeannette's window, to show her
that he would have chosen her for his queen, if she had deigned to
appear at supper.

"A bean is a very little thing," thought he, "but it is a slight mark of
courtesy and friendship, and will make my excuses for not having said
good-by to her."

But a still, small voice within counseled him against making this
offering, and pointed out to him that a man should not follow the
example of those young girls who try to make men love, remember, and
regret them, when they have not the slightest idea of giving anything in
return.

"No, no, François," said he, putting back his pledge into his pocket,
and hastening his step; "a man's will must be firm, and he must allow
himself to be forgotten when he has made up his mind to forget himself."

Thereupon, he strode rapidly away, and before he had gone two gunshots
from Jean Vertaud's mill he fancied that he saw Madeleine's image before
him, and heard a faint little voice calling to him for help. This dream
drew him on, and he seemed to see already the great ash-tree, the
fountain, the meadow of the Blanchets, the mill-dam, the little bridge,
and Jeannie running to meet him; and in the midst of all this, the
memory of Jeannette Vertaud was powerless to hold him back an inch.

He walked so fast that he felt neither cold nor hunger nor thirst, nor
did he stop to take breath till he left the highroad and reached the
cross of Plessys, which stands at the beginning of the path which leads
to Presles.

When there, he flung himself on his knees and kissed the wood of the
cross with the ardor of a good Christian who meets again with a good
friend. Then he began to descend the great track, which is like a road,
except that it is as broad as a field. It is the finest common in the
world, and is blessed with a beautiful view, fresh air, and extended
horizon. It slopes so rapidly that in frosty weather a man could go
post-haste even in an ox-cart and take an unexpected plunge in the
river, which runs silently below.

François mistrusted this; he took off his sabots more than once, and
reached the bridge without a tumble. He passed by Montipouret on the
left, not without sending a loving salute to the tall old clock-tower,
which is everybody's friend; for it is the first to greet the eyes of
those who are returning home, and shows them the right road, if they
have gone astray.

As to the roads, I have no fault to find with them in summer-time, when
they are green, smiling, and pleasant to look upon. You may walk through
some of them with no fear of a sunstroke; but those are the most
treacherous of all, because they may lead you to Rome, when you think
you are going to Angibault. Happily, the good clock-tower of Montipouret
is not chary of showing itself, and through every dealing you may catch
a glimpse of its glittering steeple, that tells you whether you are
going north or northwest.

The waif, however, needed no such beacon to guide him. He was so
familiar with all the wooded paths and byways, all the shady lanes, all
the hunters' trails, and even the very hedge-rows along the roads, that
in the middle of the night he could take the shortest cut, and go as
straight as a pigeon flies through the sky.

It was toward noon when he first caught sight of the mill of Cormouer
through the leafless branches, and he was happy to see curling up from
the roof a faint blue smoke, which assured him that the house was not
abandoned to the rats.

For greater speed he crossed the upper part of the Blanchet meadow, and
thus did not pass close by the fountain; but as the trees and bushes
were stript of their leaves, he could still see sparkling in the
sunlight the open water, that never freezes, because it bubbles up from
a spring. The approach to the mill, on the contrary, was icy and so
slippery that much caution was required to step safely over the stones,
and along the bank of the river. He saw the old mill-wheel, black with
age and damp, covered with long icicles, sharp as needles, that hung
from the bars.

Many trees were missing around the house, and the place was much
changed. Cadet Blanchet's debts had called the ax into play, and here
and there were to be seen the stumps of great alders, freshly cut, as
red as blood. The house seemed to be in bad repair; the roof was
ill-protected, and the oven had cracked half open by the action of the
frost.

What was still more melancholy was that there was no sound to be heard
of man or beast; only a brindled black-and-white dog, a poor country
mongrel, jumped up from the door-step and ran barking toward François;
then he suddenly ceased, and came crawling up to him and lay at his
feet.

"Is it you, Labriche, and do you know me?" said François. "I did not
recognize you, for you are so old and miserable; your ribs stick out,
and your whiskers are quite white."

François talked thus to the dog, because he was distressed, and wanted
to gain a little time before entering the house. He had been in great
haste up to this moment, but now he was alarmed, because he feared that
he should never see Madeleine again, that she might be absent or dead
instead of her husband, or that the report of the miller's death might
prove false; in short, he was a prey to all those fancies which beset
the mind of a man who has just reached the goal of all his desires.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XVI


FINALLY François drew the latch of the door, and beheld, instead of
Madeleine, a lovely young girl, rosy as a May morning, and lively as a
linnet. She said to him, with an engaging manner: "What is it you want,
young man?"

Though she was so fair to see, François did not waste time in looking
at her, but cast his eyes round the room in search of Madeleine. He saw
nothing but the closed curtains of her bed, and he was sure that she was
in it. He did not wait to answer the pretty girl, who was Mariette
Blanchet, the miller's youngest sister, but without a word walked up to
the yellow bed and pulled the curtains noiselessly aside; there he saw
Madeleine Blanchet lying asleep, pale and wasted with fever.

He looked at her long and fixedly, without moving or speaking; and in
spite of his grief at her illness, and his fear of her dying, he was yet
happy to have her face before him, and to be able to say: "I see
Madeleine."

Mariette Blanchet pushed him gently away from the bed, drew the curtains
together, and beckoned to him to follow her to the fireside.

"Now, young man," said she, "who are you, and what do you want? I do not
know you, and you are a stranger in the neighborhood. Tell me how I may
oblige you."

François did not listen to her, and instead of answering her, he began
to ask questions about how long Madame Blanchet had been ill, whether
she were in any danger, and whether she were well cared for.

Mariette answered that Madeleine had been ill since her husband's death,
because she had overexerted herself in nursing him, and watching at his
bedside, day and night; that they had not as yet sent for the doctor,
but that they would do so in case she was worse; and as to her being
well cared for, Mariette declared that she knew her duty and did not
spare herself.

At these words, the waif looked the girl full in the face, and had no
need to ask her name, for besides knowing that soon after he had left
the mill, Master Blanchet had placed his sister in his wife's charge, he
detected in the pretty face of this pretty girl a striking resemblance
to the sinister face of the dead miller. There are many fine and
delicate faces which have an inexplicable likeness to ugly ones; and
though Mariette Blanchet's appearance was as charming as that of her
brother had been disagreeable, she still had an unmistakable family
look. Only the miller's expression had been surly and irascible, while
Mariette's was mocking rather than resentful, and fearless instead of
threatening.

So it was that François was neither altogether disturbed nor altogether
at ease concerning the attention Madeleine might receive from this young
girl. Her cap was of fine linen, neatly folded and pinned; her hair,
which she wore somewhat after the fashion of town-bred girls, was very
lustrous, and carefully combed and parted; and both her hands and her
apron were very white for a sick-nurse. In short, she was much too
young, fresh, and gay to spend the day and night in helping a person who
was unable to help herself.

François asked no more questions, but sat down in the chimney-corner,
determined not to leave the place until he saw whether his dear
Madeleine's illness turned for the better or worse.

Mariette was astonished to see him take possession of the fire so
cavalierly, just as if he were in his own house. He stared into the
blaze, and as he seemed in no humor for talking, she dared inquire no
further who he was and what was his business. After a moment, Catherine,
who had been the house-servant for eighteen or twenty years, came into
the room. She paid no attention to him, but approached the bed of her
mistress, looked at her cautiously, and then turned to the fireplace, to
see after the potion which Mariette was concocting. Her behavior showed
an intense interest for Madeleine, and François, who took the truth of
the matter in a throb, was on the point of addressing her with a
friendly greeting; but--


"But," said the priest's servant, interrupting the hemp-dresser, "you
are using an unsuitable word. A _throb_ does not express a moment, or a
minute."

"I tell you," retorted the hemp-dresser, "that a moment means nothing at
all, and a minute is longer than it takes for an idea to rush into the
head. I do not know how many millions of things you can think of in a
minute, whereas you only need a throb of time to see and hear some one
thing that is happening. I will say a little throb, if you please."

"But a throb of time!" objected the old purist.

"Ah! A throb of time! Does that worry you, Mother Monique? Does not
everything go by throbs? Does not the sun, when you see it rising in the
clouds of flames, and it makes your eyes blink to look at it? And the
blood that beats in your veins; the church clock that sifts your time
particle by particle, as a bolting-machine does the grain; your rosary
when you tell it; your heart when the priest is delayed in coming home;
the rain falling drop by drop, and the earth that turns round, as they
say, like a mill-wheel? Neither you nor I feel the motion, the machine
is too well oiled for that; but there must be some throbbing about it,
since it accomplishes its period in twenty-four hours. As to that, too,
we use the word _period_ when we speak of a certain length of time. So I
say a _throb_, and I shall not unsay it. Do not interrupt me any more,
unless you wish to tell the story."

"No, no; your machine is too well oiled, too," answered the old woman.
"Now let your tongue throb a little longer."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XVII


I WAS saying that François was tempted to speak to big old Catherine,
and make himself known to her; but as in the same throb of time he was
on the point of crying, he did not wish to behave like a fool, and did
not even raise his head. As Catherine stooped over the ashes, she caught
sight of his long legs and drew back in alarm.

"What is all that?" whispered she to Mariette in the other corner of the
room. "Where does that man come from?"

"Do you ask me?" said the girl; "how should I know? I never saw him
before. He came in here, as if he were at an inn, without a good-morning
or good-evening. He asked after the health of my sister-in-law as if he
were a near relation, or her heir; and there he is sitting by the fire,
as you see. You may speak to him, for I do not care to do so. He may be
a disreputable person."

"What? Do you think he is crazy? He does not look wicked, as far as I
can see, for he seems to be hiding his face."

"Suppose he has come for some bad purpose?"

"Do not be afraid, Mariette, for I am near to keep him in check. If he
alarms you, I shall pour a kettle of boiling water over his legs, and
throw an andiron at his head."

While they were chattering thus, François was thinking of Madeleine.

"That poor dear woman," said he to himself, "who has never had anything
but vexation and unkindness from her husband, is now lying ill because
she nursed and helped him to the end. Here is this young girl, who was
the miller's pet sister, as I have heard say, and her face bears no
traces of sorrow. She shows no signs of fatigue or tears, for her eyes
are as dear and bright as the sun."

He could not help looking at her from under the brim of his hat, for
never until then had he seen such fresh and joyous beauty. Still, though
his eyes were charmed, his heart remained untouched.

"Come," continued Catherine, in a whisper to her young mistress, "I am
going to speak to him. I must find out his business here."

"Speak to him politely," said Mariette. "We must not irritate him; we
are all alone in the house, and Jeannie may be too far away to hear our
cries."

"Jeannie!" exclaimed François, who caught nothing from all their
prattle, except the name of his old friend. "Where is Jeannie, and why
don't I see him? Has he grown tall, strong, and handsome?"

"There," thought Catherine, "he asks this because he has some evil
intention. Who is the man, for Heaven's sake? I know neither his voice
nor his figure; I must satisfy myself and look at his face."

She was strong as a laborer and bold as a soldier, and would not have
quailed before the devil himself, so she stalked up to François,
determined either to make him take off his hat, or to knock it off
herself, so that she might see whether he were a monster or a Christian
man. She approached the waif, without suspecting that it was he; for
being as little given to thinking of the past as of the future, she had
long forgotten all about François, and, moreover, he had improved so
much and was now such a handsome fellow that she might well have looked
at him several times before recalling him to mind; but just as she was
about to accost him rather roughly, Madeleine awoke, and called
Catherine, saying in a faint, almost inaudible voice that she was
burning with thirst.

François sprang up, and would have been the first to reach her but for
the fear of exciting her too much, which held him back. He quickly
handed the draught to Catherine, who hastened with it to her mistress,
forgetting everything for the moment but the sick woman's condition.

Mariette, too, did her share, by raising Madeleine in her arms, to help
her drink, and this was no hard task, for Madeleine was so thin and
wasted that it was heartbreaking to see her.

"How do you feel, sister?" asked Mariette.

"Very well, my child," answered Madeleine in the tone of one about to
die. She never complained, to avoid distressing the others.

"That is not Jeannie over there," she said, as she caught sight of the
waif. "Am I dreaming, my child, or who is that tall man standing by the
fire?"

Catherine answered:

"We do not know, dear mistress; he says nothing, and behaves like an
idiot."

The waif, at this moment, made a little motion to go toward Madeleine,
but restrained himself, for though he was dying to speak to her, he was
afraid of taking her by surprise. Catherine now saw his face, but he had
changed so much in the past three years that she did not recognize him,
and thinking that Madeleine was frightened, she said:

"Do not worry, dear mistress; I was just going to turn him out, when you
called me."

"Don't turn him out," said Madeleine, in a stronger voice, pulling aside
the curtain of her bed; "I know him, and he has done right in coming to
see me. Come nearer, my son; I have been praying God every day to permit
me the grace of giving you my blessing."

The waif ran to her, and threw himself on his knees beside her bed,
shedding tears of joy and sorrow that nearly suffocated him. Madeleine
touched his hands, and then his head; and said, as she kissed him:

"Call Jeannie; Catherine, call Jeannie, that he may share this happiness
with us. Ah! I thank God, François, and I am ready to die now, if such
is his will, for both my children are grown, and I may bid them farewell
in peace."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XVIII


CATHERINE rushed off in pursuit of Jeannie, and Mariette was so anxious
to know what it all meant, that she followed to ask questions. François
was left alone with Madeleine, who kissed him again, and burst into
tears; then she closed her eyes, looking still more weak and exhausted
than she had been before. François saw that she had fainted, and knew
not how to revive her; he was beside himself, and could only hold her in
his arms, calling her his dear mother, his dearest friend, and imploring
her, as if it lay within her power, not to die so soon, without hearing
what he had to say.

So, by his tender words, devoted care, and fond endearments, he restored
her to consciousness, and she began again to see and hear him. He told
her that he had guessed she needed him, that he had left all, and had
come to stay as long as she wanted him, and that, if she would take him
for her servant, he would ask nothing but the pleasure of working for
her, and the solace of spending his life in her service.

"Do not answer," he continued; "do not speak, my dear mother; you are
too weak, and must not say a word. Only look at me, if you are pleased
to see me again, and I shall understand that you accept my friendship
and help."

Madeleine looked at him so serenely, and was so much comforted by what
he said, that they were contented and happy together, notwithstanding
the misfortune of her illness.

Jeannie, who came in answer to Catherine's loud cries, arrived to take
his share of their joy. He had grown into a handsome boy between
fourteen and fifteen, and though not strong, he was delightfully active,
and so well brought up that he was always friendly and polite.

"Oh! How glad I am to see you like this, Jeannie," said François. "You
are not very tall and strong, but I am satisfied, because I think you
will need my help in climbing trees and crossing the river. I see that
you are delicate, though you are not ill, isn't it so? Well, you shall
be my child, still a little while longer, if you do not mind. Yes, yes;
you will find me necessary to you; and you will make me carry out your
wishes, just as it was long ago."

"Yes," said Jeannie; "my four hundred wishes, as you used to call them."

"Oho! What a good memory you have! How nice it was of you, Jeannie, not
to forget François! But have we still four hundred wishes a day?"

"Oh, no," said Madeleine; "he has grown very reasonable; he has no more
than two hundred now."

"No more nor less?" asked François.

"Just as you like," answered Jeannie; "since my darling mother is
beginning to smile again, I am ready to agree to anything. I am even
willing to say that I wish more than five hundred times a day to see her
well again."

"That is right, Jeannie," said François. "See how nicely he talks! Yes,
my boy, God will grant those five hundred wishes of yours. We shall take
such good care of your darling mother, and shall cheer and gladden her
little by little, until she forgets her weariness."

Catherine stood at the threshold, and was most anxious to come in, to
see and speak to François, but Mariette held her by the sleeve, and
would not leave off asking questions.

"What," said she, "is he a foundling? He looks so respectable."

She was looking through the crack in the door, which she held ajar.

"How comes it that he and Madeleine are such friends?"

"I tell you that she brought him up, and that he was always a very good
boy."

"She has never spoken of him to me, nor have you."

"Oh, goodness, no! I never thought of it; he was away; and I almost
forgot him; then, I knew, too, that my mistress had been in trouble on
his account, and I did not wish to recall it to her mind."

"Trouble! What kind of trouble?"

"Oh! because she was so fond of him; she could not help liking him, he
had such a good heart, poor child. Your brother would not allow him in
the house, and you know your brother was not always very gentle!"

"We must not say that, now that he is dead, Catherine."

"Yes, yes; you are right; I was not thinking. Dear me, how short my
memory is! And yet it is only two weeks since he died! But let me go in,
my young lady; I want to give the boy some dinner, for I think he must
be hungry."

She shook herself loose, ran up to François, and kissed him. He was so
handsome that she no longer remembered having once said that she would
rather kiss her sabot than a foundling.

"Oh, poor François," said she, "how glad I am to see you! I was afraid
that you would never come back. See, my dear mistress, how changed he
is! I wonder that you were able to recognize him at once. If you had not
told me who he was, I should not have known him for ages. How handsome
he is, isn't he? His beard is beginning to grow; yes, you cannot see it
much, but you can feel it. It did not prick when you went away,
François, but now it pricks a little. And how strong you are, my
friend! What hands and arms and legs you have! A workman like you is
worth three. What wages are you getting now?"

Madeleine laughed softly to see Catherine so pleased with François, and
was overjoyed that he was so strong and vigorous. She wished that her
Jeannie might grow up to be like him. Mariette was ashamed to have
Catherine look so boldly in a man's face, and blushed involuntarily. But
the more she tried not to look at him, the more her eyes strayed toward
him; she saw that Catherine was right; he was certainly remarkably
handsome, tall and erect as a young oak.

Then, without stopping to think, she began to serve him very politely,
pouring out the best wine of that year's vintage, and recalling his
attention when it wandered to Madeleine and Jeannie, and he forgot to
eat.

"You must eat more," said she; "you scarcely take anything. You should
have more appetite after so long a journey."

"Pay no attention to me, young lady," answered François, at last; "I am
too happy to be here to care about eating and drinking. Come now,"
continued he, turning to Catherine, when the room was put to rights,
"show me round the mill and the house, for everything looks neglected,
and I want to talk to you about it."

When they were outside, he questioned her intelligently on the state of
things, with the air of a man determined to know the whole truth.

"Oh, François," said Catherine, bursting into tears, "everything is
going to grief, and if nobody comes to the assistance of my poor
mistress, I believe that wicked woman will turn her out of doors, and
make her spend all she owns in lawsuits."

"Do not cry," said François, "for if you do, I cannot understand what
you say; try to speak more clearly. What wicked woman do you mean? Is it
Sévère?"

"Oh! yes, to be sure. She is not content with having ruined our master,
but now lays claim to everything he left. She is trying to prosecute us
in fifty different ways; she says that Cadet Blanchet gave her
promissory notes, and that even if she sold everything over our heads,
she would not be paid. She sends us bailiffs every day, and the expenses
are already considerable. Our mistress has paid all she could, in trying
to pacify her, and I am very much afraid that she will die of this
worry, on top of all the fatigue she underwent during her husband's
illness. At this rate, we shall soon be without food and fire. The
servant of the mill has left us, because he was owed two years' wages,
and could not be paid. The mill has stopped running, and if this goes
on, we shall lose our customers. The horses and crops have been
attached, and are to be sold; the trees are to be cut down. Oh,
François, it is ruin!"

Her tears began to flow afresh.

"And how about you, Catherine?" asked François; "are you a creditor,
too? Have your wages been paid?"

"I, a creditor?" said Catherine, changing her wail into a roar; "never,
never! It is nobody's business whether my wages are paid or not!"

"Good for you, Catherine; you show the right spirit!" said François.
"Keep on taking care of your mistress, and do not bother about the rest
I have earned a little money in my last place, and I have enough with me
to save the horses, the crops, and the trees. I am going to pay a little
visit to the mill, and if I find it in disorder, I shall not need a
wheelwright to set it going again. Jeannie is as swift as a little bird,
and he must set out immediately and run all day, and then begin again
to-morrow morning, so as to let all the customers know that the mill is
creaking like ten thousand devils, and that the miller is waiting to
grind the corn."

"Shall we send for a doctor for our mistress?"

"I have been thinking about it; but I am going to wait and watch her all
day, before making up my mind.

"Do you see, Catherine, I believe that doctors are useful when the sick
cannot do without them; but if the disease is not violent, it is easier
to recover with God's help, than with their drugs: not taking into
consideration that the mere presence of a doctor, which cures the rich,
often kills the poor. He cheers and amuses those who live in luxury, but
he scares and oppresses those who never see him except in the day of
danger. It seems to me that Madame Blanchet will recover very soon, if
her affairs are straightened.

"And before we finish this conversation, Catherine, tell me one thing
more; I ask the truth of you, and you must not scruple to tell it to me.
It will go no further; I have not changed, and if you remember me, you
must know that a secret is safe in the waif's bosom."

"Yes, yes, I know," said Catherine; "but why do you consider yourself a
waif? Nobody will call you any more by that name, for you do not deserve
it, François."

"Never mind that. I shall always be what I am, and I am not in the habit
of plaguing myself about it. Tell me what you think of your young
mistress, Mariette Blanchet."

"Oh, she! She is a pretty girl. Have you already taken it into your head
to marry her? She has some money of her own; her brother could not touch
her property, because she was a minor, and unless you have fallen heir
to an estate, Master François--"

"Waifs never inherit anything," said François, "and as to marrying, I
have as much time to think of it as the chestnut in the fire. What I
want to hear from you is whether this girl is better than her brother,
and whether she will prove a source of comfort or trouble to Madeleine,
if she stays on here."

"Heaven knows," said Catherine, "for I do not. Until now, she has been
thoughtless and innocent enough. She likes dress, caps trimmed with
lace, and dancing. She is not very selfish, but she has been so
well-treated and spoiled by Madeleine, that she has never had occasion
to show whether she could bite or not. She has never had anything to
suffer, so we cannot tell what she may be."

"Was she very fond of her brother?"

"Not very, except when he took her to balls, and our mistress tried to
convince him that it was not proper to take a respectable girl in
Sévère's company. Then the little girl, who thought of nothing but her
own pleasure, overwhelmed her brother with attentions, and turned up her
nose at Madeleine, who was obliged to yield. So Mariette does not
dislike Sévère as much as I should wish to have her, but I cannot say
that she is not good-natured and nice to her sister-in-law."

"That will do, Catherine; I ask nothing further. Only I forbid you to
tell the young girl anything of what we have been talking about."

François accomplished successfully all that he had promised Catherine.
By evening, owing to Jeannie's diligence, corn arrived to be ground, and
the mill too was in working order; the ice was broken and melted about
the wheel, the machinery was oiled, and the woodwork repaired, wherever
it was broken. The energetic François worked till two in the morning,
and at four he was up again. He stepped noiselessly into Madeleine's
room, and finding the faithful Catherine on guard, he asked how the
patient was. She had slept well, happy in the arrival of her beloved
servant, and in the efficient aid he brought. Catherine refused to leave
her mistress before Mariette appeared, and François asked at what hour
the beauty of Cormouer was in the habit of rising.

"Not before daylight," said Catherine.

"What? Then you have two more hours to wait, and you will get no sleep
at all."

"I sleep a little in the daytime, in my chair, or on the straw in the
barn, while the cows are feeding."

"Very well, go to bed now," said François, "and I shall wait here to
show the young lady that some people go to bed later than she, and get
up earlier in the morning. I shall busy myself with examining the
miller's papers and those which the bailiffs have brought since his
death. Where are they?"

"There, in Madeleine's chest," said Catherine. "I am going to light the
lamp, François. Come, courage, and try your best to make things
straight, as you seem to understand law-papers."

She went to bed, obeying the commands of the waif as if he were the
master of the house; for true it is that he who has a good head and good
heart rules by his own right.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XIX


BEFORE setting to work, François, as soon as he was left alone with
Madeleine and Jeannie (for the young child always slept in the room with
his mother), went to take a look at the sleeping woman, and thought her
appearance better than when he had first arrived. He was happy to think
that she would have no need of a doctor, and that he alone, by the
comfort he brought, would preserve her health and fortune.

He began to look over the papers, and was soon fully acquainted with
Sévère's claims and the amount of property that Madeleine still
possessed with which to satisfy them. Besides all that Sévère had
already made Cadet Blanchet squander upon her, she declared that she was
still a creditor for two hundred pistoles, and Madeleine had scarcely
anything of her own property left in addition to the inheritance that
Blanchet had bequeathed to Jeannie--an inheritance now reduced to the
mill and its immediate belongings--that is, the courtyard, the meadow,
the outbuildings, the garden, the hemp-field, and a bit of planted
ground; for the broad fields and acres had melted like snow in the
hands of Cadet Blanchet.

"Thank God!" thought François, "I have four hundred pistoles in the
charge of the priest of Aigurande, and in case I can do no better,
Madeleine can still have her house, the income of her mill, and what
remains of her dowry. But I think we can get off more easily than that.
In the first place, I must find out whether the notes signed by Blanchet
to Sévère were not extorted by stratagem and undue influence, and then
I must do a stroke of business on the lands he sold. I understand how
such affairs are managed, and knowing the names of the purchasers, I
will put my hand in the fire if I cannot bring this to a successful
issue."

The fact was that Blanchet, two or three years before his death,
straightened for money and over head and ears in debt to Sévère, had
sold his land at a low price to whomsoever wanted to buy, and turned all
his claims for it over to Sévère, thus expecting to rid himself of her
and of her comrades who had helped her to ruin him. But, as usually
happens in such sales, almost all those who hastened to buy, attracted
by the sweet fragrance of the fertile lands, had not a penny with which
to pay for them, and only discharged the interest with great difficulty.
This state of things might last from ten to twenty years; it was an
investment for Sévère and her friends, but a bad investment, and she
complained loudly of Cadet Blanchet's rashness, and feared that she
would never be paid. So she said, at least; but the speculation was
really a reasonably good one. The peasant, even if he has to lie on
straw, pays his interest, so unwilling is he to let go the bit of land
he holds, which his creditor may seize if he is not satisfied.

We all know this, my good friends, and we often try to grow rich the
wrong way, by buying fine property at a low price. However low it may
be, it is always too high for us. Our covetousness is more capacious
than our purse, and we take no end of trouble to cultivate a field the
produce of which does no cover half the interest exacted by the seller.

When we have delved and sweated all our poor lives, we find ourselves
ruined, and the earth alone is enriched by our pains and toil. Just as
we have doubled its value, we are obliged to sell it. If we could sell
it advantageously, we should be safe; but this is never possible. We
have been so drained by the interest we have had to pay, that we must
sell in haste, and for anything we can get. If we rebel, we are forced
into it by the law-courts, and the man who first sold the land gets back
his property in the condition in which he finds if; that means that for
long years he has placed his land in our hands at eight or ten per cent,
and when he resumes possession of it, it is by our labors, twice as
valuable, in consequence of a careful cultivation which has lost him
neither trouble nor expense, and also by the lapse of time which always
increases the value of property. Thus we poor little minnows are to be
continually devoured by the big fish which pursue us; punished always
for our love of gain, and just as foolish as we were before.

Sévère's money was thus profitably invested in a mortgage at a high
interest, but at the same time she had a firm hold of Cadet Blanchet's
estate, because she had managed him so cleverly that he had pledged
himself for the purchasers of his land, and had gone surety for their
payment.

François saw all this intrigue, and meditated some possible means of
buying back the land at a low price, without ruining anybody, and of
playing a tine trick upon Sévère and her clan, by causing the failure
of their speculation.

It was no easy matter. He had enough money to buy back almost everything
at the price of the original sale, and neither Sévère nor anybody else
could refuse to be reimbursed. The buyers would find it to their profit
to sell again in all haste, in order to escape approaching ruin; for I
tell you all, young and old, if you buy land on credit, you take out a
patent for beggary in your old age. It is useless for me to tell you
this, for you will have the buying mania no whit the less. Nobody can
see a plowed furrow smoking in the sun, without being in a fever to
possess it, and it was the peasant's mad fever to hold on to his own
piece of soil that caused Francois's uneasiness.

Do you know what the soil is, my children? Once upon a time, everybody
in our parishes was talking about it. They said that the old nobles had
attached us to the soil to make us drudge and die, but the Revolution
had burst our bonds, and that we no longer drew our master's cart like
oxen. The truth is that we have bound ourselves to our own acres, and we
drudge and die no less than before.

The city people tell us that our only remedy would be to have no wants or
desires. Only last Sunday, I answered a man who was preaching this
doctrine very eloquently, that if we poor peasants could only be
sensible enough never to eat or sleep, to work all the time, and to
drink nothing but fresh clear water, provided the frogs had no
objection, we might succeed in saving a goodly hoard, and in receiving
a shower of compliments for our wisdom and discretion.

Following this same train of thought, François cudgeled his brains to
find some means of inducing the purchasers of the land to sell it back
again. He finally hit upon the plan of whispering in their ears the
little falsehood, that though Sévère had the reputation of being
fabulously rich, she had really as many debts as a sieve has holes, and
that some fine morning her creditors would lay hands upon all her
claims, as well as upon all her property. He meant to tell them this
confidentially, and when they were thoroughly alarmed, he expected to
buy back Madeleine Blanchet's lands at the original price, with his own
money.

He scrupled, however, to tell this untruth, until it occurred to him
that he could give a small bonus to all the poor purchasers, to make
them amends for the interest they had already paid. In this manner
Madeleine could be restored to her rights and possessions without loss
or injury to the purchasers.

The discredit in which Sévère would be involved by his plan caused him
no scruple whatever. It is right for the hen to pull out a feather from
the cruel bird that has plucked her chickens.

When François had reached this conclusion, Jeannie awoke, and arose
softly, to avoid disturbing his mother's slumbers; then, after a
good-morning to François, he lost no time in going off to announce to
the rest of their customers that the mill was in good order, and that a
strong young miller stood in readiness to grind the corn.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XX


IT was already broad daylight when Mariette Blanchet emerged from her
nest, carefully attired in her mourning, which was so very black and so
very white that she looked as spick and span as a little magpie. The
poor child had one great care, and that was that her mourning would long
prevent her going to dances, and that all her admirers would be missing
her. Her heart was so good that she pitied them greatly.

"How is this?" said she, as she saw François arranging the papers in
Madeleine's room. "You attend to everything here, Master Miller! You
make flour, you settle the business, you mix the medicines; soon we
shall see you sewing and spinning."

"And you, my young lady," said François, who saw that she regarded him
favorably, although she slashed him with her tongue, "I have never as
yet seen you sewing or spinning; I think we shall soon find you sleeping
till noon, and it will do you good, and keep your cheeks rosy!"

"Oho! Master François, you are already beginning to tell me truths
about myself. You had better take care of that little game; I can tell
you something in return."

"I await your pleasure, my young lady."

"It will soon come; do not be afraid, Master Miller. Have the kindness
to tell me where Catherine is, and why you are here watching beside our
patient. Should you like a hood and gown?"

"Are you going to ask, in your turn, for a cap and blouse, so that you
may go to the mill? As I see you do no woman's work, which would be
nursing your sister for a little while, I suppose you would like to sift
out the chaff, and turn the grindstone. At your service. Let us change
clothes."

"It looks as if you were trying to give me a lesson."

"No; you gave me one first, and I am only returning, out of politeness,
what you lent me."

"Good! You like to laugh and tease, but you have chosen the wrong time.
We are not merry here, and it is only a short time ago that we had to go
to the graveyard. If you chatter so much, you will prevent my
sister-in-law from getting the sleep she needs so greatly."

"On that very account, you should not raise your voice so much, my young
lady; for I am speaking very low, and you are not speaking, just now, as
you should in a sick-room."

"Enough, if you please, Master François," said Mariette, lowering her
tone, and flushing angrily. "Be so good as to see if Catherine is at
hand, and tell me why she leaves my sister-in-law in your charge."

"Excuse me, my young lady," said François, with no sign of temper. "She
could not leave her in your charge, because you are too fond of
sleeping, so she was obliged to intrust her to mine. I shall not call
her, because the poor woman is jaded with fatigue. Without meaning to
offend you, I must say that she has been sitting up every night for two
weeks. I sent her off to bed, and, until noon, I mean to do her work and
mine too, for it is only right for us all to help one another."

"Listen, Master François," said the young girl, with a sudden change of
tone; "you appear to hint that I think only of myself and leave all the
work to others. Perhaps I should have sat up in my turn, if Catherine
had told me that she was tired; but she insisted that she was not at all
tired, and I did not understand that my sister was so seriously ill. You
think that I have a bad heart, but I cannot imagine where you have
learned it. You never knew me before yesterday, and we are not, as yet,
intimate enough for you to scold me as you do. You behave exactly as if
you were the head of the family, and yet--"

"Come, out with it, beautiful Mariette, say what you have on the tip of
your tongue. And yet I was taken in and brought up out of charity, is
not it so? And I cannot belong to the family, because I have no family;
I have no right to it, as I am a foundling! Is that all you wanted to
say?"

As François gave Mariette this straightforward answer, he looked at her
in a way that made her blush up to the roots of her hair, for she saw
that his expression was that of a stem and serious person, although he
appeared so serene and gentle that it was impossible to irritate him, or
to make him think or say anything unjust.

The poor child, who was ordinarily so ready with her tongue, was
overawed for a moment, but although she was a little frightened, she
still felt a desire to please this handsome fellow, who spoke so
decidedly and looked her so frankly in the eyes. She was so confused and
embarrassed, that it was with difficulty she restrained her tears, and
she turned her face quickly the other way, to hide her emotion.

He observed it, however, and said very kindly:

"I am not angry, Mariette, and you have no cause to be, on your part. I
think no ill of you; I see only that you are young, that there is
misfortune in the house, and that you are thoughtless. I must tell you
what I think about it."

"What do you think about it?" asked she; "tell me at once, that I may
know whether you are my friend or my enemy."

"I think that you are not fond of the care and pains people take for
those whom they love, who are in trouble. You like to have your time to
yourself, to turn everything into sport, to think about your dress, your
lovers, and your marriage by and by, and you do not mind having others
do your share. If you have any heart, my pretty child, if you really
love your sister-in-law, and your dear little nephew, and even the poor,
faithful servant who is capable of dying in harness like a good horse,
you must wake up a little earlier in the morning, you must care for
Madeleine, comfort Jeannie, relieve Catherine, and, above all, shut your
ears to the enemy of the family, Madame Sévère, who is, I assure you,
a very bad woman. Now you know what I think, neither more nor less."

"I am glad to hear it," said Mariette, rather dryly; "and now please
tell me by what right you wish to make me think as you do."

"Oh! This is the way you take it, is it?" answered François. "My right
is the waif's right, and to tell you the whole truth, the right of the
child who was taken in and brought up by Madame Blanchet; for this, it
is my duty to love her as my mother, and my right to try to requite her
for her kindness."

"I have no fault to find," returned Mariette, "and I see that I cannot
do better than give you my respect at once, and my friendship as time
goes on."

"I like that," said François; "shake hands with me on it."

He strode toward her, holding out his great hand, without the slightest
awkwardness; but the little Mariette was suddenly stung by the fly of
coquetry, and, withdrawing her hand, she announced that it was not
proper to shake hands so familiarly with a young man.

François laughed and left her, seeing plainly that she was not frank,
and that her first object was to entangle him in a flirtation.

"Now, my pretty girl," thought he, "you are much mistaken in me, and we
shall not be friends in the way you mean."

He went up to Madeleine, who had just waked, and who said to him, taking
both his hands in hers:

"I have slept well, my son, and God is gracious to let me see your face
first of all, on waking. How Is it that Jeannie is not with you?"

Then, after hearing his explanation, she spoke some kind words to
Mariette, telling the young girl how sorry she was to have her sit up
all night, and assuring her that she needed no such great care. Mariette
expected François to say that she had risen very late; but François
said nothing and left her alone with Madeleine, who had no more fever
and wanted to try to get up.

After three days, she was so much better that she was able to talk over
business affairs with François.

"You may put yourself at ease, my dear mother," said he. "I sharpened my
wits when I was away from here, and I understand business pretty well. I
mean to see you through these straits, and I shall succeed. Let me have
my way; please do not contradict anything I say, and sign all the papers
I shall bring you. Now, that my mind is at ease on the score of your
health, I am going to town to consult some lawyers. It is market-day,
and I shall find some people there whom I want to see, and I do not
think my time will be wasted."

He did as he said; and after receiving instructions and advice from the
lawyers, he saw clearly that the last promissory notes which Blanchet
had given Sévère would be a good subject for a lawsuit; for he had
signed them when he was beside himself with drink, fever, and
infatuation. Sévère believed that Madeleine would not dare to go to
law, on account of the expense. François was unwilling to advise Madame
Blanchet to embark in a lawsuit, but he thought there was a reasonable
chance of bringing the matter to an amicable close, if he began by
putting a bold face on it; and as he needed somebody to carry a message
into the enemy's camp, he bethought himself of a plan which succeeded
perfectly.

For several days he had watched little Mariette, and assured himself
that she took a daily walk in the direction of Dollins, where Sévère
lived, and that she was on more friendly terms with this woman than he
could wish, chiefly because she met at her house all her young
acquaintances, and some men from town who made love to her. She did not
listen to them, for she was still an innocent girl, and had no idea that
the wolf was so near the sheepfold, but she loved flattery, and was as
thirsty for it as a fly for milk. She kept her walks secret from
Madeleine; and as Madeleine never gossiped with the other women, and had
not as yet left her sick-room, she guessed nothing, and suspected no
evil. Big Catherine was the last person in the world to notice anything,
so that the little girl cocked her cap over her ear, and, under the
pretext of driving the sheep to pasture, she soon left them in charge of
some little shepherd-boy, and was off to play the fine lady in poor
company.

François, however, who was going continually to and fro on the affairs
of the mill, took note of what the girl was doing. He never mentioned it
at home, but turned it to account, as you shall hear.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XXI


HE planted himself directly in her way at the river-crossing; and just
as she stepped on the foot-bridge which leads to Dollins, she beheld the
waif, astride of the plank, a leg dangling on each side above the water,
and on his face the expression of a man who has all the time in the
world to spare. She blushed as red as a cherry, and if she had not been
taken so by surprise, she would have swerved aside, and pretended to be
passing by accident.

But the approach to the bridge was obstructed by branches, and she did
not see the wolf till she felt his teeth. His face was turned toward
her, so she had no means of advancing or retreating, without being
observed.

"Master Miller," she began, saucily, "can't you move a hairbreadth to
let anybody pass?"

"No, my young lady," replied François, "for I am the guardian of this
bridge till evening, and I claim the right to collect toll of
everybody."

"Are you mad, François? Nobody pays toll in our country, and you have
no right on any bridge, or foot-bridge, or whatever you may call it in
your country of Aigurande. You may say what you like, but take yourself
off from here, as quickly as you can; this is not the place for jesting;
you will make me tumble into the water."

"Then," said François, without moving, and folding his arms in front of
him, "you think that I want to laugh and joke with you, and that my
right of toll is that of paying you my court? Pray get rid of that idea,
my young lady; I wish to speak sensibly to you, and I will allow you to
pass if you give me permission to accompany you for a short part of your
way."

"That would not be at all proper," said Mariette, somewhat flustered by
her notion of what François was thinking. "What would they say of me
hereabouts, if anybody met me out walking alone with a man to whom I am
not betrothed?"

"You are right," said François; "as Sévère is not here to protect
you, people would talk of you; that is why you are going to her house,
so that you may walk about in her garden with all your admirers. Very
well, so as not to embarrass you, I shall speak to you here, and
briefly, for my business is pressing, and this it is. You are a good
girl; you love your sister-in-law Madeleine; you see that she is in
difficulties, and you must want to help her out of them."

"If that is what you want to say," returned Mariette, "I shall listen to
you, for you are speaking the truth."

"Very well, my dear young lady," said François, rising and leaning
beside her, against the bank beside the little bridge, "you can do a
great service to Madame Blanchet. Since it is for her good and interest,
as I fondly believe, that you are so friendly with Sévère, you must
make that woman agree to a compromise. Sévère is trying to attain two
objects which are incompatible: she wants to make Master Blanchet's
estate security for the payment of the land he sold for the purpose of
paying his debts to her; and in the second place, she means to exact
payment of the notes which he signed in her favor. She may go to law, if
she likes, and wrangle about this poor little estate, but she cannot
succeed in getting more out of it than there is. Make her understand
that if she does not insist upon our guaranteeing the payment of the
land, we can pay her notes; but if she does not allow us to get rid of
one debt, we shall not have funds enough to pay the other, and if she
makes us drain ourselves with expenses which bring her no profit, she
runs the risk of losing everything."

"That is true," said Mariette; "although I understand very little about
business, I think I can understand as much as that. If I am able, by any
chance, to influence her, which would be better: for my sister-in-law to
pay the notes, or to be obliged to redeem the security?"

"It would be worse for her to pay the notes, for it would be more
unjust. We could contest the notes and go to law about them; but the law
requires money, and you know that there is none, and never will be any,
at the mill. So, it is all one to your sister, whether her little all
goes in a lawsuit or in paying Sévère; whereas it is better for
Sévère to be paid, without having a lawsuit.

"As Madeleine is sure to be ruined in either case, she prefers to have
all her possessions seized at once, than to drag on after this under a
heavy burden of debt, which may last all her lifetime; for the
purchasers of Cadet Blanchet's land are not able to pay for it. Sévère
knows this well, and will be forced, some fine day, to take back her
land; but this idea is not at all distressing to her, as it will be a
profitable speculation for her to receive the land in an improved
condition, having long drawn a heavy rate of interest from it. Thus,
Sévère risks nothing in setting us free, and assures the payment of
her notes."

"I shall do as you say," said Mariette; "and if I fail, you may think as
ill of me as you choose."

"Then, good luck, Mariette, and a pleasant walk to you," said François,
stepping out of her way.

Little Mariette started off to Dollins, well pleased to have such a fine
excuse for going there, for staying a long time, and for returning often
during the next few days. Sévère pretended to like what she heard, but
she really determined to be in no haste. She had always hated Madeleine
Blanchet, because of the involuntary respect her husband had felt for
her. She thought she held her safely in her claws for the whole of her
lifetime, and preferred to give up the notes, which she knew to be of no
great value, rather than renounce the pleasure of harassing her with the
burden of an endless debt.

François understood all this perfectly, and was anxious to induce her
to exact the payment of this debt, so that he might have an opportunity
to buy back Jennie's broad fields from those who had purchased them for
a song. When Mariette returned with her answer, he saw that they were
trying to mislead him with words; that, on one hand, the young girl was
glad to have her errands last for a long time to come, and that, on the
other hand. Sévère had not reached the point of being more desirous
for Madeleine's rain than for the payment of her notes.

To clinch matters, he took Mariette aside, two days afterward.

"My dear young lady," said he, "you most not go to Dollins to-day. Your
sister has learned, though I do not know how, that you go there more
than once a day, and she says it is no place for a respectable girl. I
have tried to make her understand that it is for her interest that you
are so friendly with Sévère; but she blamed me as well as you. She
says that she would rather be ruined than have you lose your reputation,
that you are under her guardianship, and that she has authority over
you. If you do not obey of your own free will, you will be prevented
from going by main force. If you do as she says, she will not mention
this to you, as she wishes to avoid giving you pain, but she is very
much displeased with you, and it would be well for you to beg her
pardon."

François had no sooner unleashed the dog than it began to bark and
bite. He was correct in his estimate of little Mariette's temper, which
was as hasty and inflammable as her brother's had been.

"Indeed, indeed!" she exclaimed; "do you expect me to obey my
sister-in-law, as if I were a child of three? You talk as if she were my
mother, and I owed her submission! What makes her think that I may lose
my reputation? Tell her that it is quite as well buckled on as her own,
and perhaps better. Why does she imagine that Sévère is not so good as
other people? Is it wicked not to spend the whole day sewing, spinning,
and praying? My sister-in-law is unjust because she has a quarrel with
her about money, and she thinks she can treat her as she pleases. It is
very imprudent of her, for if Sévère wished she could turn her out of
the house she lives in; and as Sévère is patient, and does not make
use of her advantage, she is certainly better than she is said to be.
And this is the way in which you thank me, who have been obliging enough
to take part in these disputes, which are no concern of mine! I can tell
you, François, that the most respectable people are not always the most
prudish, and when I go to Sévère's I do no more mischief than if I
stayed at home."

"I don't know about that," said François, who was determined to make
all the scum of the vat mount to the surface; "perhaps your sister was
right in thinking that you are in some mischief there. Look here,
Mariette, I see that you like to go there too well. It is not natural.
You have delivered your message about Madeleine's affairs, and since
Sévère has sent no answer, it is evident that she means to give none.
Do not go back there any more, or I shall think, with Madeleine, that
you go with no good intention."

"Then, Master François," cried Mariette, in a fury, "you think you are
going to dictate to me? Do you mean to take my brother's place at home,
and make yourself master there? You have not enough beard on your chin
to give me such a lecture, and I advise you to leave me alone. Your
humble servant," she added, adjusting her coif; "if my sister-in-law
asks where I am, tell her that I am at Sévère's, and if she sends you
after me, you will see how you are received."

She burst the door open violently, and flew off with a light foot toward
Dollins; but as François was afraid that her anger would cool on the
way, especially as the weather was frosty, he allowed her a little
start. He waited until he thought she had nearly reached Sévère's
house, and then putting his long legs in motion he ran like a horse let
loose, and caught up with her, to make her believe that Madeleine had
sent him in pursuit of her.

He was so provoking that she raised her hand against him. He dodged her
every time, being well aware that anger evaporates with blows, and that
a woman's temper improves when she has relieved herself by striking.
Then he ran away, and as soon as Mariette arrived at Sévère's house
she made a great explosion. The poor child had really no bad designs;
but in the first flame of her anger she disclosed everything, and put
Sévère into such a towering passion that François, who was retreating
noiselessly through the lane, heard them at the other end of the
hemp-field, hissing and crackling like fire in a barn full of hay.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XXII


HIS plan succeeded admirably, and he was so sure of it that he went over
to Aigurande next day, took his money from the priest, and returned at
night, carrying the four little notes of thin paper, which were of such
great value, and yet made no more noise in his pocket than a crumb of
bread in a cap. After a week's time, Sévère made herself heard. All
the purchasers of Blanchet's land were summoned to pay up, and as not
one was able to do it. Sévère threatened to make Madeleine pay
instead.

Madeleine was much alarmed when she heard the news, for she had received
no hint from François of what was coming.

"Good!" said he to her, rubbing his hands; "a trader cannot always gain,
nor a thief always rob. Madame Sévère is going to make a bad bargain
and you a good one. All the same, my dear mother, you must behave as if
you thought you were ruined. The sadder you are, the gladder she will be
to do what she thinks is to your harm. But that harm is your salvation,
for when you pay Sévère you will buy back your son's inheritance."

"What do you expect me to pay her with, my child?"

"With the money I have in my pocket, and which belongs to you."

Madeleine tried to dissuade him; but the waif was headstrong, as he said
himself, and no one could loose what he had bound. He hastened to
deposit two hundred pistoles with the notary, in the widow Blanchet's
name, and Sévère was paid in full, willingly or unwillingly, and also
all the other creditors of the estate, who had made common cause with
her.

Moreover, after François had indemnified all the poor purchasers of the
land for their losses, he had still enough money with which to go to
law, and he let Sévère know that he was about to embark in a lawsuit
on the subject of the promissory notes which she had wrongfully and
fraudulently extracted from the miller. He set afloat a report which
spread far and wide through the land. He pretended that in fumbling
about an old wall of the mill which he was trying to prop up, he had
found old Mother Blanchet's money-box, filled with gold coins of an
ancient stamp, and that by this means Madeleine was richer than she had
ever been. Weary of warfare, Sévère consented to a compromise, hoping
also that François would be lavish of the crowns winch he had so
opportunely discovered, and that she could wheedle from him more than he
gave her to expect. She got nothing for her pains, however, and he was
so hard with her that she was forced to return the notes in exchange for
a hundred crowns.

To revenge herself, she worked upon little Mariette, telling her that
the money-box of old Mother Blanchet, who was the girl's grandmother,
should have been divided between her and Jeannie, that she had a right
to her share, and should go to law against her sister.

Then the waif was forced to tell the true source of the money he had
provided, and the priest of Aigurande sent him the proofs, in case of
there being a lawsuit.

He began by showing these proofs to Mariette, begging her to make no
unnecessary disclosures, and making it dear to her that she had better
keep quiet. But Mariette would not keep at all quiet; her little brain
was excited by the confusion in the family, and the devil tempted the
poor child. In spite of all the kindness she had received from
Madeleine, who had treated her as a daughter and indulged all her whims,
she felt a dislike and jealousy of her sister-in-law, although her pride
prevented her from acknowledging it. The truth is that in the midst of
her tantrums and quarrels with François, she had inadvertently fallen
in love with him, and never suspected the trap which the devil had set
for her. The more François upbraided her for her faults and vagaries,
the more crazy she was to please him.

She was not the kind of girl to pine and consume away in grief and
tears; but it robbed her of her peace to think that François was so
handsome, rich, and upright, so kind to everybody, and so clever and
brave; that he was a man to shed his last drop of blood for the woman he
loved, and yet that none of this was for her, although she was the
prettiest and richest girl in the neighborhood, and counted her lovers
by the dozen.

One day she opened her heart to her false friend, Sévère. It was in
the pasture at the end of the road of the water-lilies, underneath an
old apple-tree that was then in blossom. While all these things were
happening, the month of May had come, and Sévère strolled out under
the apple-blossoms, to chat with Mariette, who was tending her flock
beside the river.

It pleased God that François, who was near by, should overhear their
conversation. He had seen Sévère enter the pasture, and at once
suspected her of meditating some intrigue against Madeleine; and as the
river was low, he walked noiselessly along the bank, beneath the bushes
which are so tall just there that a hay-cart could pass under their
shade. When he came within hearing distance, he sat down on the ground,
without making a sound, and opened his ears very wide.

The two women plied their tongues busily. In the first place, Mariette
confessed to not caring for a single one of her suitors, for the sake of
a young miller, who was not at all courteous to her, and the thought of
whom kept her awake at night. Sévère, on the other hand, wanted to
unite her to a young man of her acquaintance, who was so much in love
with the girl, that he had promised a handsome wedding-present to
Sévère, if she succeeded in marrying him to Mariette Blanchet. It
appeared also that Sévère had exacted a gratuity beforehand from him
and from several others; so she naturally did all in her power to put
Mariette out of conceit with François.

"A plague take the waif!" she exclaimed. "What, Mariette, a girl in your
position marry a foundling! You would be called Madame Strawberry, for
he has no other name. I should be ashamed for you, my poor darling. Then
you have no chance; you would be obliged to light for him with your
sister-in-law, for he is her lover, as true as I live."

"Sévère," cried Mariette, "you have hinted this to me more than once;
but I cannot believe you; my sister-in-law is too old."

"No, no, Mariette; your sister-in-law is not old enough to do without
this sort of thing; she is only thirty, and when the waif was but a boy,
your brother discovered that he was too familiar with his wife. That is
why he gave him a sound thrashing with the butt of his whip, and turned
him out of doors."

François felt a lively desire to spring out of the bushes and tell
Sévère that she lied; but he restrained himself, and sat motionless.

Sévère continued to ring the changes on this subject, and told so many
shocking lies that François's face burned, and it was with great
difficulty that he kept his patience.

"Then," said Mariette, "he probably means to marry her now that she is a
widow; he has already given her a good part of his fortune, and he must
wish to have a share in the property which he has bought back."

"Somebody else will outbid him," said the other; "for now that Madeleine
has plundered him, she will be on the lookout for a richer suitor, and
will be sure to find one. She must take a husband to manage her
property, but while she is trying to find him, she keeps this great
simpleton with her, who serves her for nothing, and amuses her
solitude."

"If she is going along at that pace," said Mariette, much vexed, "I am
in a most disreputable house; in which I run too many dangers! Do you
consider, my dear Sévère, that I am very ill-lodged, and that people
will talk against me? Indeed, I cannot stay where I am; I must leave.
Oh! yes, these pious women criticize everybody else, because they
themselves are shameless only in God's sight! I should like to hear her
say anything against you and me now! Very well! I am going to say
good-by to her, and I am coming to live with you; if she is angry, I
shall answer her; if she tries to bring me back by force, to live with
her, I shall go to law; and I shall let people know what she is--do you
hear?"

"A better remedy for you, Mariette, is to get married as soon as
possible. She will not refuse her consent, because I am sure she is
anxious to rid herself of you. You stand in the way of her relations
with the handsome waif. You must not delay, cannot you understand, for
people will say that he belongs to both of you, and then nobody will
marry you. Go and get married, then, and take the man I advise."

"Agreed," said Mariette, breaking her shepherd's crook violently,
against the old apple-tree. "I give you my word. Go and tell him,
Sévère; let him come to my house this evening, to ask for my hand, and
let our banns be published next Sunday."




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XXIII


FRANÇOIS was never sadder than when he emerged from the river-bank
where he had hidden himself to listen to the women's talk. His heart was
as heavy as lead, and when he had gone half-way home he lost courage to
return, and, stepping aside into the path of the water-lilies, he sat
down in the little grove of oaks, at the end of the meadow.

Once there, by himself, he wept like a child, and his heart was bursting
with sorrow and shame; for he was ashamed to hear of what he was
accused, and to think that his poor dear friend Madeleine, whom, through
all his life, he had loved so purely and constantly, reaped nothing but
insult and slander from his devotion and fidelity.

"Oh! my God, my God!" said he to himself, "how can it be that the world
is so wicked and that a woman like Sévère can have the insolence to
measure the honor of a woman like my dear mother, by her own standard?
And that little Mariette, who should naturally be inclined to innocence
and truth, a child as she is, who does not as yet know the meaning of
evil, even she listens to this infernal calumny, and believes in it, as
if she knew how it stung! Since this is so, others will believe it too;
as the larger part of people living mortal life are old in evil, almost
everybody win think that because I love Madame Blanchet, and she loves
me, there must be something dishonorable in it."

Then poor François undertook a careful examination of his conscience,
and searched his memory to see whether, by any fault of his, he were
responsible for Sévère's wicked gossip; whether he had behaved wisely
in all respects, or whether, by a lack of prudence and discretion, he
had involuntarily given rise to evil thinking. But it was in vain that
he reflected, for he could not believe that he had appeared guilty of
what had never even crossed his mind.

Still absorbed in thought and reverie, he went on saying to himself:

"Suppose that my liking had turned to loving, what harm would it be in
God's sight, now that she is a widow and her own mistress? I have given
a good part of my fortune to her and Jeannie, but I still have a
considerable share left, and she would not wrong her child if she
married me. It would not be self-seeking on my part to desire this, and
nobody could make her believe that my love for her is self-interested.
I am a foundling, but she does not care for that. She has loved me with
a mother's love, which is the strongest of all affections, and now she
might love me in another way. I see that her enemies will force me to
leave her if I do not marry her, and I should rather die than leave her
a second time. Besides, she needs my help, and I should be a coward to
leave her affairs in such disorder when I have strength as well as money
with which to serve her. Yes, all I have should belong to her, and as
she often talks to me about paying me back in the end, I must put that
idea out of her head, by sharing all things in common with her, in
accordance with the permission of God and the law. She must keep her
good name for her son's sake, and she can save it only by marrying me.
How is it that I never thought of this before, and that I needed to hear
it suggested by a serpent's tongue? I was too simple-minded and
unsuspecting; and my poor mother is too charitable to others to take to
heart the injuries which are done her. Everything tends toward good, by
the will of Heaven; and Madame Sévère, who was plotting mischief, has
done me the service of teaching me my duty."

Without indulging any longer in meditation or wonder, François set off
on his way home, determined to speak of his plan to Madame Blanchet
without loss of time, and on his knees to entreat her to accept him as
her protector, in the name of God, and for eternal life.

When he reached Cormouer, he saw Madeleine spinning on her door-step, and
for the first time in his life her face had the effect of making him
timid and confused. He was in the habit of walking straight up to her,
looking her full in the face to ask her how she did; but this time he
paused on the little bridge as if he were examining the mill-dam, and
only looked at her out of the corners of his eyes.

When she turned toward him, he moved farther away, not understanding
himself what his trouble was, or why a matter which, a few minutes ago,
had seemed to him so natural and opportune, should suddenly become so
awkward to confess.

Madeleine called him.

"Come here to me," said she, "for I have something to say to you, dear
François. We are alone, so come and sit down beside me, and open your
heart to me, as if I were your father-confessor, for I want to hear the
truth from you."

François was reassured by Madeleine's words, and he sat down beside
her.

"I promise, my dear mother," said he, "to open my heart to you as I do
to God, and to give you a true confession."

He fancied that something had come to her ears which had brought her to
the same conclusion as himself; he was delighted, and waited to hear
what she had to say.

"François," she went on, "you are in your twenty-first year, and it is
time for you to think of marrying; you are not opposed to it, I hope?"

"No, I am not opposed to anything you wish," answered François,
blushing with pleasure; "go on, my dear Madeleine."

"Good!" said she. "I expected this, and I have guessed the right thing.
Since you wish it, I wish it too, and perhaps I thought of it before you
did. I was waiting to see whether the person in question cared for you,
and I think that if she does not as yet, she will, very soon. Don't you
think so, too, and shall I tell you where you stand? Why do you look at
me with such a puzzled expression? Don't I speak clearly enough? I see
that you are shy about it, and I must help you out. Well, the poor child
pouted all the morning because you teased her a little yesterday, and I
dare say she thinks you do not love her. But I know that you do love
her, and if you scold her sometimes for her little caprices it is
because you are a trifle jealous. You must not hold back for that,
François. She is young and pretty; but though there is some danger in
this, if she truly loves you she will willingly submit herself to you."

"I should like," said François, much disappointed, "to know whom you
are talking of, my dear mother, for I am wholly at a loss."

"Really!" said Madeleine; "don't you know what I mean? Am I dreaming, or
are you trying to keep a secret from me?"

"A secret from you!" said François, taking Madeleine's hand. He soon
dropped it, and took up instead the corner of her apron, which he
crumpled as if he were provoked, then lifted toward his lips as if about
to kiss it, and finally let go just as he had done with her hand. He was
first inclined to cry; then he felt angry, and then giddy, all in
succession.

Madeleine was amazed.

"You are in trouble, my child," she cried, "and this means that you are
in love--that all does not go as you wish. I can assure you that
Mariette has a good heart; she, too, is distressed, and if you speak
openly with her she will tell you, in return, that she thinks of no one
but you."

François sprang up, and walked up and down the courtyard for some time
in silence; then he returned to Madeleine's side.

"I am very much surprised to hear what you have in your mind, Madame
Blanchet; this never once occurred to me, and I am well aware that
Mariette has no liking for me, and that I am not to her taste."

"Oh, come!" said Madeleine; "you are speaking petulantly, my child! Don't
you think I noticed how often you talked with her? Though I could not
catch the meaning of what you said, it was evident that she understood
very well, for her face glowed like a burning coal. Do you think I do
not know that she runs away from the pasture every day, leaving her
flock in charge of the first person she meets? Her sheep flourish at the
expense of our wheat; but I do not want to cross her, or talk to her of
sheep, when her head is full of nothing but love and marriage. The poor
child is just of an age to guard her sheep ill, and her heart still
worse. But it is great good luck for her, François, that instead of
falling in love with one of those bad fellows whom I was so much afraid
of her meeting at Sévère's, she had the good sense to think of you. It
makes me, too, very happy to think that, when you are married to my
sister-in-law, who is almost the same as a daughter to me, you will live
with me and make part of my family, and that I may harbor you in my
house, work with you, bring up your children, and thus repay your
kindness to me. So, do not let your childish notions interfere with all
the joys I have planned. Try to see clearly, and forget your jealousy.
If Mariette is fond of dress, it is because she is anxious to please
you. If she has been rather idle lately, it is only because she is
thinking too much of you; and if she answers me sometimes rather
sharply, she does so because she is vexed with your reprimands, and does
not know whom to blame for them. The proof that she is good and desirous
of mending her ways, is that she has recognized your goodness and
wisdom, and wants you for her husband."

"You are good, my dear mother," said François, quite crestfallen. "Yes,
it is you who are good, for you believe in the goodness of others and
deceive yourself. I can tell you that, if Mariette is good, too, and I
will not say she is not, lest I should injure her in your opinion, it is
in a way very different from yours, and, consequently, very displeasing
to me. Do not say anything more to me about her. I swear to you on my
word and honor, on my heart and soul, that I am no more in love with her
than I am with old Catherine, and if she has any regard for me, it is
her own misfortune, because I cannot return it. Do not try to make her
say she loves me; your tact would be at fault, and you would make her my
enemy. It is quite the contrary; hear what she will say to you to-night,
and let her marry Jean Aubard, whom she has made up her mind to accept.
Let her marry as soon as possible, for she is out of place in your
house. She is not happy there, and will not be a source of comfort to
you."

"Jean Aubard!" exclaimed Madeleine; "he is not a proper person for her;
he is a fool, and she is too clever to submit herself to a stupid man."

"He is rich, and she will not submit to him. She will manage him, and he
is just the man for her. Will you not trust in your friend, my dear
mother? You know that, up to this time, I have never given you any bad
advice. Let the young girl go; she does not love you as she ought, and
she does not know your worth."

"You say this because your feelings are hurt, François," said
Madeleine, laying her hand on his head and moving it gently up and down,
as if she were trying to shake the truth out of it François was
exasperated that she would not believe him, and it was the first time in
his life that there had been any dispute between them. He withdrew,
saying in a dissatisfied tone of voice:

"Madame Blanchet, you are not just to me. I tell you that girl does not
love you. You force me to say this, against my will; for I did not come
here to bring distrust and strife. So, if I tell it to you, you may know
that I am sure of it; and do you think I can love her after that? You
cannot love me any more, if you will not believe me."

Wild with grief, François rushed off to weep all alone by the fountain.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XXIV


MADELEINE was still more perplexed than François, and was on the point
of following him with questions and words of encouragement; but she was
held back by the sudden appearance of Mariette, who, with a strange
expression on her face, announced the offer of marriage she had received
from Jean Aubard. Madeleine, who was unable to disabuse herself of the
idea that the whole affair was the result of a lovers' quarrel,
attempted to speak to the girl of François; but Mariette answered in a
tone which gave her great pain, and was utterly incomprehensible to her:

"Those people who care for foundlings may keep them for their own
amusement; I am an honest girl, and shall not allow my good name to
suffer because my poor brother is dead. I am perfectly independent,
Madeleine; and if I am forced by law to ask your advice, I am not forced
to take it when it is not for my good. So please do not stand in my way,
or I may stand in yours hereafter."

"I cannot imagine what is the matter with you, my dear child," said
Madeleine, very sweetly and sadly. "You speak to me as if you had
neither respect nor affection for me. I think you must be in some
distress which has confused your mind; so I entreat you to take three or
four days, in which to decide. I shall tell Jean Aubard to come back,
and if you are of the same opinion after a little quiet reflection, I
shall give you free leave to marry him, as he is a respectable man, and
comfortably off. But you are in such an excited condition, just now,
that you cannot know your own mind, and you shut your heart against my
affection. You grieve me very much, but as I see that you are grieved
too, I forgive you."

Mariette tossed her head, to show how much she despised that sort of
forgiveness, and ran away to put on her silk apron and prepare for the
reception of Jean Aubard, who arrived, an hour later, with big Sévère
in gala dress.

This time, at last, Madeleine was convinced of Mariette's ill-will
toward her, since the girl had brought into her house, on a family
matter, a woman who was her enemy, and whom she blushed to see.
Notwithstanding this, she advanced very politely to meet Sévère, and
served her with refreshments, without any appearance of anger or
dislike; for she feared that if Mariette were opposed, she would prove
unmanageable. So Madeleine said that she made no objection to her
sister-in-law's desire, but requested three days' grace before giving
her answer.

Thereupon Sévère said, insolently, that was a very long time to wait.
Madeleine answered quietly that it was a very short time.

Jean Aubard then left, looking like a blockhead, and giggling like a
booby, for he was sure that Mariette was madly in love with him. He had
paid well for this illusion, and Sévère gave him his money's worth.

As Sévère left the house, she said to Mariette that she had ordered a
cake and some sweets at home for the betrothal, and even if Madame
Blanchet delayed the preliminaries, they must sit down to the feast.
Madeleine objected that it was not proper for a young girl to go off in
the company of a man who had not as yet received his answer from her
family.

"If that is so, I shall not go," said Mariette, in a huff.

"Oh, yes, yes; you must come," Sévère insisted; "are not you your own
mistress?"

"No, indeed," returned Mariette; "you see my sister-in-law forbids me to
go."

She went into her room and slammed the door; but she merely passed
through the house, went out by the back door, and caught up with
Sévère and her suitor at the end of the meadow, laughing and jeering
at Madeleine's expense.

Poor Madeleine could not restrain her tears when she saw how things were
going.

"François was right," thought she; "the girl does not love me, and she
is ungrateful at heart. She will not believe that I am acting for her
good, that I am most anxious for her happiness, and wish only to prevent
her doing something which she will regret hereafter. She has taken evil
counsel, and I am condemned to see that wretched Sévère stirring up
trouble and strife in my family. I have not deserved all these troubles,
and I must submit to God's will. Fortunately, poor François was more
clear-sighted than I. How much he would suffer with such a wife!"

She went to look for him, to let him know what she thought; but when she
found him in tears beside the fountain, she supposed he was grieving for
the loss of Mariette, and attempted to comfort him. The more she said
the more pained he was, for it became clear to him that she refused to
understand the truth, and that her heart could never feel for him in the
way he had hoped.

In the evening, when Jeannie was in bed and asleep, François sat with
Madeleine, and sought to explain himself.

He began by saying that Mariette was jealous of her, and that Sévère
had slandered her infamously; but Madeleine never dreamed of his
meaning.

"What can she say against me?" said she, simply; "and what jealousy can
she put into poor silly little Mariette's head? You are mistaken,
François; something else is at stake, some interested reason which we
shall hear later. It is not possible that she should be jealous; I am
too old to give any anxiety to a young and pretty girl. I am almost
thirty, and for a peasant woman who has undergone a great deal of
trouble and fatigue, that is old enough to be your mother. The devil
only could say that I think of you in any way but as my son, and
Mariette must know I longed to have you both marry. No, no; never
believe that she has any such evil thought, or, at least, do not mention
it to me, for I should be too much pained and mortified."

"And yet," said François, making a great effort to speak, and bending
low over the fire to hide his confusion from Madeleine, "Monsieur
Blanchet had some such evil thought when he turned me out of doors!"

"What! Do you know that now, François?" exclaimed Madeleine. "How is it
that you know it? I never told you, and I never should have told you. If
Catherine spoke of it to you, she did wrong. Such an idea must shock and
pain you as much as it does me, but we must try not to think of it any
more and to forgive my husband, now that he is dead. All the obloquy of
it falls upon Sévère; but now Sévère can be no longer jealous of me.
I have no husband, and I am as old and ugly as she could ever have
wished, though I am not in the least sorry for it, for I have gained the
right of being respected, of treating you as a son, and of finding you a
pretty young wife, who will live happily with me and love me as a
mother. This is my only wish, François, and you must not distress
yourself, for we shall find her. So much the worse for Mariette if she
despises the happiness I had in store for her. Now, go to bed, my child,
and take courage. If I thought I were any obstacle to your marrying, I
should send you away at once; but you may be sure that nobody worries
about me, or imagines what is absolutely impossible."

As François listened to Madeleine, he was convinced that she was right,
so accustomed was he to believe all that she said. He rose to bid her
good night, but, as he took her hand, it happened that, for the first
time in his life, he looked at her with the intention of finding out
whether she were old and ugly; and the truth is, she had long been so
sad and serious that she deceived herself, and was still as pretty a
woman as she had ever been.

So when François saw all at once that she was still young and as
beautiful as the blessed Virgin, his heart gave a great bound, as if he
had climbed to the pinnacle of a tower. He went back for the night to
the mill, where his bed was neatly spread in a square of boards among
the sacks of flour. Once there, and by himself, he shivered and gasped
as if he had a fever; but it was only the fever of love, for he who had
all his life warmed himself comfortably in front of the ashes, had
suddenly been scorched by a great burst of flame.




[Illustration]


CHAPTER XXV


FROM that time on, the waif was so melancholy that it made one's heart
ache to see him. He worked like a horse, but he found no more joy or
peace, and Madeleine could not induce him to say what was the matter
with him. It was in vain he swore that he neither loved nor regretted
Mariette, for Madeleine would not believe him, and could assign no other
cause for his depression. She was grieved that he should be in distress
and yet no longer confide in her, and she was amazed that his trouble
should make him so proud and self-willed.

As it was not in her nature to be tormenting, she made up her mind to
say nothing further to him on the subject. She attempted to make
Mariette reverse her decision, but her overtures were so ill-received
that she lost courage, and was silent. Though her heart was full of
anguish, she kept it to herself, lest she should add to the burden of
others.

François worked for her, and served her with the same zeal and devotion
as before. As in the old time, he stayed as much as possible in her
company, but he no longer spoke as he used. He was always embarrassed
with her, and turned first red as fire, and then white as a sheet in the
same minute. She was afraid he was ill, and once took his hand to see if
he were feverish; but he drew back from her as if her touch hurt him,
and sometimes he reproached her in words which she could not understand.

The trouble between them grew from day to day. During all this time,
great preparations were being made for Mariette's marriage to Jean
Aubard, and the day which was to end her mourning was fixed as that of
the wedding.

Madeleine looked forward to that day with dread; she feared that
François would go crazy, and was anxious to send him to spend a little
time at Aigurande, with his old master Jean Vertaud, so as to distract
his mind. François, however, was unwilling to let Mariette believe what
Madeleine insisted upon thinking. He showed no vexation before her, was
on friendly relations with her lover, and jested with Sévère, when he
met her along the road, to let her see that he had nothing to fear from
her. He was present at the wedding; and as he was really delighted to
have the house rid of the girl, and Madeleine freed from her false
friendship, it never crossed anybody's mind that he had been in love
with her. The truth began to dawn even on Madeleine, or at least she was
inclined to believe that he had consoled himself. She received
Mariette's farewell with her accustomed warmth of heart; but as the
young girl still cherished a grudge against her on account of the waif,
Madeleine could not help seeing that her sister-in-law left her without
love or regret. Inured as she was to sorrow, Madeleine wept over the
girl's hardness of heart, and prayed God to forgive her.

After a week had passed, François unexpectedly told her that he had
some business at Aigurande that would call him there for the space of
five or six days. She was not surprised, and hoped it would be for the
good of his health, for she believed that he had stifled his grief, and
was ill in consequence.

But that grief, which she thought he had overcome, increased with him
day by day. He could think of nothing else, and whether asleep or awake,
far or near, Madeleine was always in his heart and before his eyes. It
is true that all his life had been spent in loving her and thinking of
her, but until lately these thoughts of her had been has happiness and
consolation, whereas they were now his despair and his undoing. As long
is he was content to be her son and friend, he wished for no better lot
on earth; but now his love had changed its character, and he was
exquisitely unhappy. He fancied that she could never change as he had
done. He kept repeating to himself that he was too young, that she had
known him as a forlorn and wretched child, that he could be only an
object of care and compassion to her, and never of pride. In short, he
believed her to be so lovely and so attractive, so far above him, and so
much to be desired, that when she said she was no longer young and
pretty, he thought she was adopting a rôle to scare away her suitors.

In the mean time, Sévère, Mariette, and their clan were slandering her
openly on his account, and he was in terror lest some of the scandal
should come to her ears, and she should be displeased and long for his
departure. He knew she was too kind to ask him to go, but he dreaded
being again a cause of annoyance to her, as he had been once before, and
it occurred to him to go to ask the advice of the priest of Aigurande,
whom he had found to be a just and God-fearing man.

He went, but with no success, as the priest was absent on a visit to his
bishop; so François returned to the mill of Jean Vertaud, who had
invited him for a few days' visit, while waiting for the priest's
return.

He found his kind master as true a man and as faithful a friend as he
had left him, and his good daughter Jeannette on the brink of marriage
with a very respectable man whom she had accepted from motives of
prudence rather than of enthusiasm, but for whom she fortunately felt
more liking than distaste. This put François more at his ease with her
than he had ever been, and the next day being Sunday, he had a long talk
with her, and confided in her Madame Blanchet's many difficulties, and
his satisfaction in rescuing her from them.

Jeannette was quick-witted, and from one thing and another she guessed
that the waif was more agitated by his attachment to Madeleine than he
would confess. She laid her hand on his arm, and said to him abruptly:

"François, you must hide nothing from me. I have come to my senses now,
and you see that I am not ashamed to tell you that I once thought more
of you than you did of me. You knew my feelings, and you could not
return them, but you would not deceive me, and no selfish interest led
you to do what many others would have done in your place. I respect you
both for your behavior toward me and for your constancy to the woman you
loved best in the world; and instead of disowning my regard for you, I
am glad to remember it. I expect you to think the better of me for
acknowledging it, and to do me the justice to observe that I bear no
grudge or malice toward you for your coolness. I mean to give you the
greatest possible token of my esteem. You love Madeleine Blanchet, not
indeed as a mother, but as a young and attractive woman, whom you wish
for your wife."

"Oh!" said François, blushing like a girl, "I love her as a mother, and
my heart is full of respect for her."

"I have no doubt of it," answered Jeannette; "but you love her in two
ways, for your face says one thing and your words another. Very well,
François; you dare not tell her what you dare not even confess to me,
and you do not know whether she can answer your two ways of loving."

Jeannette Vertaud spoke with so much sense and sweetness, and showed
François such true friendship, that he had not the courage to deceive
her, and pressing her hand, he told her that she was like a sister to
him, and the only person in the world to whom he had the heart to
disclose his secret.

Jeannette asked him several questions, which he answered truly and
openly.

"François, my friend," said she, "I understand it all. It is impossible
for me to know what Madeleine Blanchet will think about it; but I see
that you might be for years in her company without having the boldness
to tell her what you have on your mind. No matter. I shall find out for
you, and shall let you know. My father and you and I shall set out
to-morrow for a friendly visit to Cormouer, as if we went to make the
acquaintance of the kind woman who brought up our friend François; you
must take my father to walk about the place, under pretext of asking his
advice, and I shall spend the time talking with Madeleine. I shall use a
great deal of tact, and shall not tell what your feelings are until I am
certain of hers."

François was so grateful to Jeannette that he was ready to fall on his
knees before her; and Jean Vertaud, who, with the waif's permission, was
informed of the situation, gave his consent to the plan. Next day they
set out; Jeannette rode on the croup behind her father, and François
started an hour earlier than they to prepare Madeleine for the visit she
was to receive.

The sun was setting as François approached Cormouer. A storm came up
during his ride, and he was drenched to the skin; but he never murmured,
for he had good hope in Jeannette's friendly offices, and his heart was
lighter than when he had left home. The water was dripping from the
bushes, and the blackbirds were singing like mad in thankfulness for a
last gleam from the sun before it sank behind the hill of Grand-Corlay.
Great flocks of birds fluttered from branch to branch around François,
and their joyous chattering cheered his spirits. He thought of the time
when he was little, and roamed about the meadows, whistling to attract
the birds, absorbed in his childish dreams and fancies. Just then a
handsome bullfinch hovered round his head, like a harbinger of good luck
and good tidings, and his thoughts wandered back to his Mother Zabelle
and the quaint songs of the olden time, with which she used to sing him
to sleep.

Madeleine did not expect him so soon. She had even feared that he would
never come back at all, and when she caught sight of him, she could not
help running to kiss him, and was surprised to see how much it made him
blush. He announced the approaching visit, and apparently as much afraid
of having her guess his feelings as he was grieved to have her ignore
them, in order to prevent her suspecting anything, he told her that Jean
Vertaud thought of buying some land in the neighborhood.

Then Madeleine bestirred herself to prepare the best entertainment she
could offer to François's friends.

Jeannette was the first to enter the house, while her father was putting
up their horse in the stable; and as soon as she saw Madeleine, she took
a great liking for her, a liking which the other woman fully returned.
They began by shaking hands, but they soon fell to kissing each other
for the sake of their common love for François, and they spoke together
freely, as if they had had a long and intimate acquaintance. The truth
is they were both excellent women, and made such a pair as is hard to
find. Jeannette could not help a pang on seeing Madeleine, whom she knew
to be idolized by the man for whom she herself still cherished a
lingering fondness; but she felt no jealousy, and tried to forget her
grief in the good action on which she was bent. On the other hand, when
Madeleine saw the young woman's sweet face and graceful figure, she
supposed that it was she whom François had loved and pined for, that
they were now betrothed, and that Jeannette had come to bring the news
in person; but neither did she feel any jealousy, for she had never
thought of François save as her own child.

In the evening, after supper, Father Vertaud, who was tired by his ride,
went to bed; and Jeannette took Madeleine out into the garden with her,
after first instructing François to keep a little aloof with Jeannie,
but still near enough to see her let down the corner of her apron, which
she wore tucked up on one side, for this was to be the signal for him to
join them. She then fulfilled her mission conscientiously, and so
skilfully that Madeleine had no time to exclaim, although beyond measure
astonished, as the matter was unfolded to her. At first she thought it
but another proof of François's goodness of heart, that he wished to
put a stop to all evil gossip, and to devote his life to her service;
and she would have refused, thinking it too great a sacrifice on the
part of so young a man to marry a woman older than himself. She feared
he would repent later, and could not long keep his faith to her, without
vexation and regret; but Jeannette gave her to understand that the waif
was in love with her, heart and soul, and that he was losing his health
and peace of mind because of her.

This was inconceivable to Madeleine. She had lived such a sober and
retired life, never adorning her person, never appearing in public, nor
listening to flattery, that she had no longer any idea of the impression
she might make upon a man.

"Then," said Jeannette, "since he loves you so much, and will die if you
refuse him, will you persist in closing your eyes and ears to what I say
to you? If you do, it must be because you dislike the poor young fellow,
and would be sorry to make him happy."

"Do not say that, Jeannette," answered Madeleine; "I love him almost, if
not quite, as much as my Jeannie, and if I had ever suspected that he
thought of me in another light, it is quite possible that my affection
for him would have been more passionate. But what can you expect? I
never dreamed of this, and I am still so dazed that I do not know how to
answer. I ask for time to think of it and to talk it over with him, so
that I may find out whether he does this from a whim or out of mere
pique, or whether, perhaps, he thinks it is a duty he owes me. This I am
afraid of most of all, and I think he has repaid me fully for the care I
took of him, and it would be too much for him to give me his liberty and
himself, at least unless he loves me as you think he does."

When Jeannette heard these words, she let down the corner of her apron,
and François, who was waiting near at hand with his eyes fixed upon
her, was beside them in an instant. The clever Jeannette asked Jeannie
to show her the fountain, and they strolled off together, leaving
Madeleine and François together.

But Madeleine, who had expected to put her questions to the waif, in
perfect calmness, was suddenly covered with shyness and confusion, like
a young girl; for confusion such as hers, so sweet and pleasant to see,
belongs to no age, but is bred of innocence of mind and purity of life.
When François saw that his dear mother blushed and trembled as he did,
he received it as a more favorable token than if she had kept her usual
serene manner. He took her hand and arm, but he could not speak.
Trembling all the while, she tried to shake herself loose and to follow
Jeannie and Jeannette, but he held her fast, and made her turn back with
him. When Madeleine saw his boldness in opposing his will to hers, she
understood, better than if he had spoken, that it was no longer her
child, the waif, but her lover, François, that walked by her side.

After they had gone a little distance, silent, but linked arm in arm, as
vine is interlaced with vine, François said:

"Let us go to the fountain; perhaps I may find my tongue there."

They did not find Jeannie and Jeannette beside the fountain, for they
had gone home; but François found courage to speak, remembering that it
was there he had seen Madeleine for the first time, and there, too, he
had bidden her farewell, eleven years afterward. We must believe that he
spoke very fluently, and that Madeleine did not gainsay him, for they
were still there at midnight. She was crying for joy, and he was on his
knees before her, thanking her for accepting him for her husband.

     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

"There ends the story," said the hemp-dresser, "for it would take too
long to tell you about the wedding. I was present, myself, and the same
day the waif married Madeleine in the parish of Mers, Jeannette was
married in the parish of Aigurande. Jean Vertaud insisted that François
and his wife, and Jeannie, who was happy as a king, with their friends,
relations, and acquaintances, should come to his house for the
wedding-feast, which was finer, grander, and more delightful than
anything I have ever seen since."

"Is the story true in all points?" asked Sylvine Courtioux.

"If it is not, it might be," answered the hemp-dresser. "If you do not
believe me, go and see for yourself."

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69153 ***