"Marguerite, is not she charming?" I cried.
"Ah, the little children always are," said the old woman.
(I don't agree with her—little children can be great teases.) But Marguerite had more to say.
"My Damoiselle sees they are yet innocent of actual sin; therefore they are among the best things in God's world. I may be wrong, but I think the good God must have been the loveliest babe ever seen. How I should have liked to be there!—if the holy Mother would have allowed me to hold Him in my arms!"
"Ah, I suppose only the holiest saints would be allowed to touch Him," said I.
"I am not so sure, if my Damoiselle will pardon me. She was no saint, surely, that crept into the Pharisee's house to break the casting-bottle[#] on His feet; yet the hardest word she had from Him was 'Go in peace.' Ah, I thank the good God that His bidding is not, 'Come unto Me, all ye that are holy.' There are few of us would come, if it were! But 'Come unto Me, all ye that are weary'—that takes us all in. For we are all weary some time. The lot of a woman is a weary lot, at the best."
[#] Used to sprinkle perfumes.
"Well, it may be, among the villeins," said I.
"My Damoiselle, I never saw more bitter tears than those of the old Lady de Chatelherault—mother of the Lady de Lusignan—when her fair-haired boy was brought in to her in the bower, with the green weeds in his long bright hair, and the gold broidery of his velvet tunic tarnished by the thick stagnant water. Early that morning he had been dancing by her, with the love-light in his beautiful blue eyes; and now, when the dusk fell, they laid him down at her feet, drowned and dead, with the light gone out of the blue eyes for ever. Ah, I have seen no little sorrow amongst men and women in my seventy years!—but I never saw a woman look, more than she did, as if she had lost the light of life. The villeins have a hard lot, as the good God knows; but all the sorrow of life is not for the villeins—no, no!"
How oddly she puts things! I should never have thought of supposing that the villeins had any sorrow. A certain dull kind of coarse grief, or tired feeling, perhaps, they may have at times, like animals: but sorrow surely is a higher and finer thing, and is reserved for the nobles. As to old Marguerite herself, I never do quite think of her as a villein. She has dwelt with nobles all her life, so to speak, and is not of exactly the same common sort of stuff that they are.