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.