"No, I am not clever. I mean that I could suffer all the pains that a man living mortal life can endure, and could still be happy if I thought Madame Blanchet loved me. That is the reason why I just said to you that if you thought as I did, you would say: 'François loves me, and I am content to be alive.'"
"You are right, my poor dear child," answered Madeleine; "and the things you say to me sometimes make me want to cry. Yes, truly, your affection for me is one of the joys of my life, and perhaps the greatest, after—no, I mean with my Jeannie's. As you are older than he, you can understand better what I say to you, and you can better explain your thoughts to me. I assure you that I am never wearied when I am with both of you, and the only prayer I make to God is that we may long be able to live together as we do now, without separating."
"Without separating, I should think so!" said François. "I should rather be cut into little pieces than leave you. Who else would love me as you have loved me? Who would run the danger of being ill-treated for the sake of a poor waif, and who would call me her child, her dear son? For you call me so often, almost always. You often say to me when we are alone: 'Call me mother, and not always Madame Blanchet.' I do not dare to do so, because I am afraid of becoming accustomed to it and letting it slip out before somebody."
"Well, even if you did so?"
"Oh! you would be sure to be blamed for it, and I do not like to have you tormented on my account. I am not proud, and I do not care to have it known that you have raised me from my orphan estate. I am satisfied to know, all by myself, that I have a mother and am her child. Oh! you must not die, Madame Blanchet," added poor François, looking at her sadly, for his thoughts had long been running on possible calamity. "If I lost you, I should have no other friend on this earth; you would go straight into Paradise, and I am not sure that I deserve ever to receive the reward of going there with you."
François had a kind of foreboding of heavy misfortune in all he said and thought, and some little time afterward the misfortune fell.
He had become the servant of the mill, and it was his duty to make the round of the customers of the mill, to carry their corn away on his horse, and return it to them in flour. This sometimes obliged him to take long rides, and for this same purpose he often visited Blanchet's mistress, who lived about a league from the mill. He was not at all fond of this commission, and would never linger an instant in her house after her corn was weighed and measured.
* * * * * * * *
At this point of the tale the narrator stopped.
"Are you aware that I have been talking a long time?" said she to her friends, who were listening. "My lungs are not so strong as they once were, and I think that the hemp-dresser, who knows the story better than I, might relieve me, especially as we have just come to a place that I do not remember so well."