Buvat had seen, without taking much notice, these frequent removals, but it was not very difficult to understand his neighbor's situation. Buvat, who was a careful man, had some savings which he had a great wish to put at his neighbor's service; but Clarice's pride increased with her poverty, and poor Buvat had never yet dared to make the offer. Twenty times he had gone to her with a little rouleau, which contained his whole fortune of fifty or sixty louis, but every time he left without having dared to take it out of his pocket; but one day it happened that Buvat, descending to go to business, having met the landlord who was making his quarterly round, and guessing that his neighbor might be embarrassed, even for so small a sum, took the proprietor into his own room, saying that the day before Madame du Rocher had given him the money, that he might get both receipts at once. The landlord, who had feared a delay on the part of his tenant, did not care from whence the money came, and willingly gave the two receipts.
Buvat, in the naïveté of his soul, was tormented by this good action as by a crime. He was three or four days without daring to present himself to his neighbor, so that when he returned, he found her quite affected by what she thought an act of indifference on his part. Buvat found Clarice so much changed during these few days, that he left her wiping his eyes, and for the first time he went to bed without having sung, during the fifteen turns he generally took in his bedroom—
"Then let me go," etc.
which was a proof of melancholy preoccupation.
The last days of winter passed, and brought, in passing, the news that Lerida had surrendered, and that the young and indefatigable general was about to besiege Tortosa. This was the last blow for poor Clarice. She understood that spring was coming, and with it a new campaign, which would retain the duke with the army. Strength failed her, and she was obliged to take to her bed.
The position of Clarice was frightful. She did not deceive herself as to her illness. She felt that it was mortal, and she had no one in the world to whom she could recommend her child. The poor woman feared death, not on her own account, but on her daughter's, who would not have even the stone of her mother's tomb to rest her head on, for the unfortunate have no tomb. Her husband had only distant relations, from whom she could not solicit aid; as to her own family, born in France, where her mother died, she had not even known them; besides, she understood that if there were any hope from that quarter, there was no longer the time to seek it. Death was approaching.
One night Buvat, who the evening before had left Clarice devoured by fever, heard her groaning so deeply, that he jumped from his bed and dressed himself to go and offer her help; but on arriving at the door, he did not dare to enter or to knock—Clarice was sobbing and praying aloud. At this moment Bathilde woke and called her mother. Clarice drove back her tears, took her child from the cradle, and placing her on her knees on her own bed, made her repeat what prayers she knew, and between each of them Buvat heard her cry in a sad voice—
"Oh, my God! listen to my poor child!"
There was in this nocturnal scene—the child scarcely out of the cradle, and a mother half way to the grave, both addressing the Lord as their only support in the silence of night—something so deeply sad that good Buvat fell on his knees, and inwardly swore, what he had not dared to offer aloud, that though Bathilde might be an orphan, yet she should not be abandoned. God had heard the double prayers which had ascended to Him, and He had granted them.
The next day Buvat did what he had never dared to do before. He took Bathilde in his arms, leaned his good-natured round face against the charming little face of the child, and said softly—