those two ten sous pieces; what became of them?"
"Godmother—"
"Where are those two ten sous pieces, tell me?"
"I—I don't know," repeated the poor girl, blushing. "They must have slipped out of my purse. I—I—"
"You lie. You are blushing as red as a beet."
"I assure you—"
"Yes, yes, I see," sneered the sick woman, "while I am lying here on my death-bed you have been stuffing yourself with dainties."
"But, godmother—"
"Get out of my sight, get out of my sight, I tell you! Let me lie here and starve if you will, but don't let me ever lay eyes on you again! You were very anxious for me to drink that milk! There was poison in it, I expect, I am such a burden to you."
At this accusation, which was as absurd as it was atrocious, Mariette stood for a moment silent and motionless, not understanding at first the full meaning of those horrible words; but when she did, she recoiled, clasping her hands in positive terror; then, unable to restrain her tears, and yielding to an irresistible impulse, she threw herself on the sick woman's neck, twined her arms around her, and covering her face with tears and kisses, exclaimed, wildly:
"Oh, godmother, godmother, how can you?"
This despairing protest against a charge which could have originated only in a disordered brain restored the invalid to her senses, and, realising the injustice of which she had been guilty, she, too, burst into tears; then taking one of Mariette's hands in one of hers, and trying to press the young girl to her breast with the other, she said, soothingly:
"Come, come, child, don't cry so. What a silly creature you are! Can't you see that I was only joking?"
"True, godmother, I was very stupid to think you could be in earnest," replied Mariette, passing the back of her hand over her eyes to dry her tears, "but really I couldn't help it."
"You ought to have more patience with your poor godmother, Mariette," replied the sick woman, sadly. "When I suffer so it seems as if I can hardly contain myself."
"I know it, I know it, godmother! It is easy enough to be just and amiable when one is happy, while you, poor dear, have never known what happiness is."
"That is true," said the sick woman, feeling a sort of cruel satisfaction in justifying her irritability by an enumeration of her grievances, "that is true. Many persons may have had a lot like mine, but no one ever had a worse one. Beaten as an apprentice, beaten by my husband until he drank himself to death, I have dragged my ball and chain along for fifty years, without ever having known a single happy day."
"Poor godmother, I understand only too well how much you must have suffered."
"No, child, no, you cannot understand, though you have known plenty of trouble in your short life; but you are pretty, and when you have on a fresh white cap, with a little bow of pink ribbon on your hair, and you look at yourself in the glass, you have a few contented moments, I know."
"But listen, godmother, I—"
"It is some comfort, I tell you. Come, child, be honest now, and admit that you are pleased, and a little proud too, when people turn to look at you, in spite of your cheap frock and your clumsy laced shoes."
"Oh, so far as that is concerned, godmother, I always feel ashamed, somehow, when I see people looking at me. When I used to go to the workroom there was a man who came to see Madame Jourdan, and who was always looking at me, but I just hated it."
"Oh, yes, but for all that it pleases you way down in your secret heart; and when you get old you will have something pleasant to think of, while I have not. I can't even remember that I was ever young, and, so far as looks are concerned, I was always so ugly that I never could bear to look in the glass, and I could get no husband except an old drunkard who used to beat me within an inch of my life. I didn't even have a chance to enjoy myself after his death, either, for I had a big bill at the wine-shop to pay for him. Then, as if I had not trouble enough, I must needs lose my health and become unable to work, so I should have died of starvation, but for you."
"Come, come, godmother, you're not quite just," said Mariette, anxious to dispel Madame Lacombe's ill-humour. "To my certain knowledge, you have had at least one happy day in your life."
"Which day, pray?"
"The day when, at my mother's death, you took me into your home out of charity."
"Well?"
"Well, did not the knowledge that you had done such a noble deed please you? Wasn't that a happy day for you, godmother?"
"You call that a happy day, do you? On the contrary it was one of the very worst days I ever experienced."
"Why, godmother?" exclaimed the girl, reproachfully.
"It was, for my good-for-nothing husband having died, as soon as his debts were paid I should have had nobody to think of but myself; but after I took you, it was exactly the same as if I were a widow with a child to support, and that is no very pleasant situation for a woman who finds it all she can do to support herself. But you were so cute and pretty with your curly head and big blue eyes, and you looked so pitiful kneeling beside your mother's coffin, that I hadn't the heart to let you go to the Foundling Asylum. What a night I spent asking myself what I should do about you, and what would become of you if I should get out of work. If I had been your own mother, Mariette, I couldn't have been more worried, and here you are talking about that having been a happy day for me. No; if I had been well off, it would have been very different! I should have said to myself: 'There is no danger, the child will be provided for.' But to take a child without any hope of bettering its condition is a very serious thing."
"Poor godmother!" said the young girl, deeply affected. Then smiling through her tears in the hope of cheering the sick woman, she added:
"Ah, well, we won't talk of days, then, but of moments, for I'm going to convince you that you have at least been happy for that brief space of time, as at this present moment, for instance."
"This present moment?"
"Yes, I'm sure you must be pleased to see that I have stopped crying, thanks to the kind things you have been saying to me."
But the sick woman shook her head sadly.
"When I get over a fit of ill-temper like that I had just now, do you know what I say to myself?" she asked.
"What is it, godmother?"
"I say to myself: 'Mariette is a good girl, I know, but I am always so disagreeable and unjust to her that way down in the depths of her heart she must hate me, and I deserve it.'"
"Come, come, godmother, why will you persist in dwelling upon that unpleasant subject, godmother?" said the girl, reproachfully.
"You must admit that I am right, and I do not say this in any faultfinding way, I assure you. It would be perfectly natural. You are obliged almost to kill yourself working for me, you nurse me and wait on me, and I repay you with abuse and hard words. My death will, indeed, be a happy release for you, poor child. The sooner the undertaker comes for me, the better."
