"Thanks, thanks, Mont Saint-Jean, you please me exceedingly when you say that." And Fleur-de-Marie, much moved, extended her hand to her companion.
"What a pretty, little, fairy-like hand! How white and small!" said Mont Saint-Jean, receding as though she were afraid to touch it with her coarse and clumsy hands.
Yet, after a moment's hesitation, she respectfully applied her lips to the end of the slender fingers which Fleur-de-Marie extended to her, then, kneeling suddenly, she fixed on her an attentive, concentrated look.
"Come and sit here by me," said La Goualeuse.
"Oh, no, indeed; never, never!"
"Why not?"
"Respect discipline, as my brave Mont Saint-Jean used to say; soldiers together, officers together, each with his equals."
"You are crazy; there is no difference between us two."
"No difference! And you say that when I see you, as I do now, as handsome as a queen. Oh, what do you mean now? Leave me alone, on my knees, that I may look at you as I do now. Who knows, although I am a real monster, my child may perhaps resemble you? They say that sometimes happens from a look."
Then by a scruple of incredible delicacy in a creature of her position, fearing, perhaps, that she had humiliated or wounded Fleur-de-Marie by her strange desire, Mont Saint-Jean added, sorrowfully: