"Yes, yes!"
"This isn't all!" cried La Louve; "La Goualeuse must ask our pardon for having called us cowards! If not, and we let her go on, she'll finish by eating us up; we are very stupid not to see that. She must ask our pardon. On her knee! on both knees! or we'll treat her like Mont Saint Jean, her protegee. On your knees—on your knees! Oh! we are cowards, are we?"
Fleur-de-Marie was not alarmed at these furious cries; she let the storm rage, but as soon as she could be heard, casting a calm and melancholy glance around her, she replied to La Louve, who vociferated anew, "Dare to repeat that we are cowards!"
"You? no, no; it is this poor woman whose clothes you have torn, whom you have beaten, dragged in the mire, who is a coward! Do you not see how she weeps, how she trembles in looking at you? It is she who is a coward, since she is afraid of you."
The discernment of Fleur-de-Marie served her perfectly. She might have invoked justice and duty to disarm the stupid and brutal conduct of the prisoners, they would not have listened to her; but in addressing them with this sentiment of natural generosity, which is never extinct even in the most contemptible natures, she awoke a feeling of pity.
La Louve and her companions still murmured; Fleur-de-Marie continued: "Your target does not deserve compassion, you say; but her child deserves it. Alas! does it not feel the blows given to the mother? When she cries for mercy, it is not for herself, it is for her child! When she asks for some of your bread, if you have too much, because she has more hunger than usual, it is not for her, but for her child! When she begs you, with tears in her eyes, to spare these rags, which she has had so much trouble to collect, it is not for her, but for her child! This poor little cap, which you have made so much fun of, is laughable, perhaps; yet only to look at it makes me feel like weeping. I avow it. Laugh at us both, Mont Saint Jean and me, if you will." The prisoners did not laugh. La Louve even looked sadly at the little cap she held in her hand. "Come, now!" continued Fleur-de-Marie, wiping her eyes with the back of her white and delicate hand; "I know you are not so hard. You torment Mont Saint Jean from want of employment, not from cruelty. But you forget that she has her child. Could she hold it in her arms that it should protect her, not only would you not strike her, for fear of hurting the poor innocent, but if it was cold, you would give to its mother all you could to cover it, eh, La Louve?"
"It is true: who would not pity a child?"
"It is very plain."
"If it was hungry you would take the bread out of your own mouth; would you not, La Louve?"
"Yes, and willingly. I am no worse than others."