Raoul woke up feeling very ill the morning of the day that Marie Josephine went to the house of Great-aunt Hortense and let her mother through the garden door. He had eaten heartily of pig’s feet and apricot preserve, presents to the seed shopman and his family from the market gardener’s wife.
Late that same afternoon Dian visited him in his stuffy room at the top of the seed shop. He found him cross and unhappy. His head ached and he could not stop thinking about the pig’s feet and the apricot preserve, much as he tried to do so. He did not have a great many things besides food to think about, and felt at a loss. He cheered up on seeing his shepherd friend, and when Dian rose to take his leave, said he felt better. Dian went out and came back again with some grapes. He placed them in a cracked dish on a table near the oat-straw shakedown where Raoul was lying.
“You will be glad of their refreshment in the morning, though you make a face at them now,” he said, smiling. Then he sat down again on a stool near the rough bed.
“My master’s friend who knows of medicine saw me, and he says I’ll not be able to leave the city for some days; I have fever,” Raoul said, giving his hard pillow an impatient poke. Dian took the pillow and shook it up, and lifted Raoul so that he rested more comfortably. Then he sat quietly beside him, thinking deeply.
“Will your master drive out the cart himself, then?” he asked the boy.
Raoul shook his head vigorously.
“Not him! He’s deep in talking, talking all the time, going to section meetings, and quarreling with everybody. Tortot the baker won’t speak to him or to the seed shopman. He’s just about distracted since they broke down his shop and played such havoc with his goods. He hasn’t dared to open up the shop since because of the mob.” Raoul raised his head from the pillow and spoke confidentially to Dian. “He doesn’t say anything about the boy that disappeared from the shop that night. He knows he’d get himself into a good measure of trouble over hiding an aristocrat that way. They’d say in the convention he was trying to help him get away, instead of holding him until the right time to get rid of him. Oh, you can wager he’ll keep still enough about that. I don’t care what they do. I’m going to stay home when once I get there. I hate this old place and everybody here but you!” At this last remark Raoul became so upset that he threw the pillow to the other end of the room. He seemed to feel better after he had done so, for he grinned at Dian.
The door opened just then and the market gardener came in, a prosperous-looking, red-faced man in grey breeches and dark-brown waistcoat decorated with the tri-colored rosette.
“A fine boy, a fine boy. He would do well to eat only black bread and garlic for a time. He’s been living too high, that’s what’s the matter with him!” he exclaimed in his bluff way, standing over the cot and looking good-naturedly down at Raoul.
Dian stood, and, leaning over, laid his hands on Raoul’s shoulder.