Her eyes wandered from the great chimneys to the railway tracks, where all was quiet on this Sabbath day, to the winding streets and the quaint houses with their tiled or thatched roofs. Amongst the very old houses there was one which seemed more pretentious than the others. It stood in a large garden in which there were great trees and a terrace, and at the remote corner of the garden a wash-house.
That house had been described to her so many times, she recognized it. It was the one in which her grandfather had lived before he had built the beautiful chateau. How many hours her father, when a boy, had spent in that wash-house on washing days, listening to the washerwomen's chatter and to the stories they told, quaint old legends. He had remembered them all those years, and later on had told them to his little daughter. There was the "Fairy of the Cascade", "The Whirling Dwarf", and lots of others. She remembered them all, and her dead father had listened to the old women telling them at that very spot down there by the river.
The sun was in her eyes now, so she changed her place. She found another grassy nook and sat down again, very thoughtful. She was thinking of her future, poor little girl.
She was sure of getting work now, and bread and a place in which to sleep, but that was not all. How would she ever be able to realize her dead mother's hopes? She trembled; it all seemed so difficult; but at least she had accomplished one great thing in having reached Maraucourt.
She must never despair, never give up hope, and now that she had a roof over her head and ten sous a day, although not much, it was far better now for her than a few days ago, when she had been penniless, famished, and had had no place where to lay her head.
She thought it would be wise, as she was beginning a new life on the morrow, that she should make a plan of what she should and what she should not say. But she was so ignorant of everything, and she soon realized that this was a task beyond her. If her mother had reached Maraucourt she would have known just what to have done. But she, poor little girl, had had no experience; she had not the wisdom nor the intelligence of a grown-up person; she was but a child, and alone.
This thought and the memory of her mother brought tears to her eyes. She began to cry unrestrainedly.
"Mother, dear mother," she sobbed.
Then her mother's last words came to her: "I see ... I know that you will be happy!"
Her mother's words might come true. Those who are at Death's door, their souls hovering between Heaven and earth, may have sometimes a divine knowledge of things which are not revealed to the living.