She was strong as a laborer and bold as a soldier, and would not have quailed before the devil himself, so she stalked up to François, determined either to make him take off his hat, or to knock it off herself, so that she might see whether he were a monster or a Christian man. She approached the waif, without suspecting that it was he; for being as little given to thinking of the past as of the future, she had long forgotten all about François, and, moreover, he had improved so much and was now such a handsome fellow that she might well have looked at him several times before recalling him to mind; but just as she was about to accost him rather roughly, Madeleine awoke, and called Catherine, saying in a faint, almost inaudible voice that she was burning with thirst.
François sprang up, and would have been the first to reach her but for the fear of exciting her too much, which held him back. He quickly handed the draught to Catherine, who hastened with it to her mistress, forgetting everything for the moment but the sick woman's condition.
Mariette, too, did her share, by raising Madeleine in her arms, to help her drink, and this was no hard task, for Madeleine was so thin and wasted that it was heartbreaking to see her.
"How do you feel, sister?" asked Mariette.
"Very well, my child," answered Madeleine in the tone of one about to die. She never complained, to avoid distressing the others.
"That is not Jeannie over there," she said, as she caught sight of the waif. "Am I dreaming, my child, or who is that tall man standing by the fire?"
Catherine answered:
"We do not know, dear mistress; he says nothing, and behaves like an idiot."
The waif, at this moment, made a little motion to go toward Madeleine, but restrained himself, for though he was dying to speak to her, he was afraid of taking her by surprise. Catherine now saw his face, but he had changed so much in the past three years that she did not recognize him, and thinking that Madeleine was frightened, she said:
"Do not worry, dear mistress; I was just going to turn him out, when you called me."