"Stop! Stop! You frighten the sheep."
A small flock of frightened sheep dispersed, dragging behind them up the rocky incline a bundle of bluish rags.
"Stop. I have it no longer. See."
And she showed the runaway her empty hands.
"Let us help the Mute."
And she ran towards the woman in rags, who was making ineffectual efforts to hold back the sheep attached to the long cords of twisted osier. Hippolyte seized the bunch of cords, and braced her feet against a stone in order to have more resisting power. She panted, her face purple; and in this violent attitude she was very beautiful. Her beauty lighted up, unexpectedly, like a torch.
"Come, George, come you too!" she cried to George, communicating to him her frank and childish joy.
The sheep stopped in a clump of furze. There were six of them, three black and three white, and bore the osier cords around their woolly necks. The woman who looked after them, emaciated, poorly covered by her bluish rags, gesticulated while giving vent, from her toothless mouth, to an incomprehensible grumbling. Her little greenish eyes, without eyelashes, bleary, tearful and congested, had a malignant look.
When Hippolyte gave her alms, she kissed the pieces of money. Then, letting go the cords, she removed from her head a rag which no longer had either form or color, stooped to the ground, and slowly, with greatest care, tied up the pieces of money in a multiplicity of knots.
"I am tired," said Hippolyte. "Let us sit down here for a moment."