CHAPTER XV.
WOLF AND LAMB.
Fleur-de-Marie, the Songstress, wore the blue dress and black cap of the prisoners; but even in this common costume she was charming. Yet since she was carried off from the farm of Bouqueval, her features were much altered; her natural paleness, slightly tinted with rose, was now as dead as the whitest alabaster; her expression had also changed; it had now assumed a kind of dignified sadness. Fleur-de-Marie knew that to endure courageously the grievous sacrifices of expiation is almost to obtain a kind of regeneration.
"Ask their pardon for me, La Goualeuse," said Mont Saint Jean. "See how they drag in the dirt all that I had collected with so much trouble; what good can it do them?"
Fleur-de-Marie did not say a word, but she began actively to collect, one by one, from under the feet of the prisoners, all the rags she could find. One of the prisoners retaining mischievously under her foot a piece of coarse muslin, Fleur-de-Marie, stooping, raised her enchanting face toward this woman, and said, in her sweet voice, "I beg you to let me take this, in the name of the poor weeping woman."
The prisoner withdrew her foot. The muslin was saved, as well as all the other rags, which the Goualeuse secured piece by piece. There remained only one little cap, which two of them were contending for, laughing.
Fleur-de-Marie said to them, "Come, be good now, and give her that little cap."
"My eye! is it for a baby harlequin, this cap? Made of gray stuff, with peaks of green and black fustian, and a bedtick lining!" This description of the cap was received with shouts of laughter.
"Laugh at it as much as you please, but give it to me," said Mont Saint Jean; "don't drag it in the gutter, as you did the rest. I beg your pardon, La Goualeuse, for having made you soil your hands for me," added she, in a grateful voice.
"Give me the harlequin cap," said La Louve, who caught it, and shook it in the air as a trophy.