"Hear me, Madeleine," replied the pastor, moving his seat close to her, "whether I go to Paris or elsewhere, I shall leave this place."
"You are going away! You wish to leave me!"
"Your earnings are merely sufficient for your own support, my dear Madeleine. I do not wish any longer to eat the half of them; and all that you can say to induce me to remain will only annoy me, without making me abandon my resolution. Departing from this place, is it not the better course for me to go to Paris than any other place, inasmuch as you give me the hope of finding a friend there?"
"But Paris is so far," said Madeleine, bursting into tears.
"Bah! sixty or eighty leagues, what is that distance to a good walker? What annoys me the most, is having to take from you two or three crowns to support me on the road and at the commencement of my sojourn. Can you make out so much?"
"I shall not let you depart for Paris with two or three crowns, Michel, you may be assured of that," said poor Madeleine, sobbing.
"That would be beyond my requirements, sister. Something tells that once I arrive there, I shall find resources, and that my first letter from Paris will bring you good news."
The poor clergyman appeared so full of hope from the success of his journey, that he finished by imparting it to Madeleine. Without being fully consoled, she smiled sometimes at the agreeable perspective which her brother offered to her imagination. He perhaps did not indulge in very sanguine expectations, but having decided on being no longer a burden to her, he felt that he could act as a messenger or woodcutter when the good Madeleine was not at hand to prevent him.
The preparations for such a journey not being of a nature to delay it, in two days after that of which we have been speaking, Madeleine carefully made up a bundle for her beloved brother, which he was to carry on the end of a stick, and gave him a sealed rouleau in which, she said, there were forty francs; and when the brother and sister had embraced each other again and again, in tearful affliction, they separated.
The pastor accomplished ten leagues in his first day's journey, impelled by the double anxiety for a speedy arrival, and an avoidance of expense on the road. He was far richer than he supposed; for on the second day, his purse being empty, although he had lived on bread and cheese, he opened the rouleau, and his surprise equalled his grateful affection when he found three pieces of gold besides the forty francs. Feeling certain that Madeleine had not been able to provide such a sum without contracting debts, he resolved not to spend this gold, and to send it back by the first opportunity; but he was not the less thankful for her sisterly love.