I looked up. The old woman was behind him. She was carrying a little wooden tub, which she placed on the floor near my chair.
"Take a foot-bath," said she; "it will do you good."
This kindness on the part of a stranger affected me more than I cared to show, and I thought: "There are kind people in the world." I took off my stockings; my feet were bleeding, and the good old dame repeated, as she gazed at them:
"Poor child! poor child!"
The man asked me whence I came. I told him from Phalsbourg in Lorraine. Then he told his wife to bring some bread, adding that, after we had taken a glass of wine together, he would leave me to the repose I needed so much.
He pushed the table before me, as I sat with my feet in the bath, and we each drained a glass of good white wine. The old woman returned with some hot bread, over which she had spread fresh, half-melted butter. Then I knew how hungry I was. I was almost ill. The good people saw my eagerness for food; for the woman said:
"Before eating, my child, you must take your feet out of the bath."
She knelt down and dried my feet with her apron before I knew what she was about to do. I cried:
"Good Heavens! madame; you treat me as if I were your son."
She replied, after a moment's mournful silence: