Guillaumette came into the room presently walking upon tiptoe and carrying a basin of soup in her hand. When she saw that her mistress was awake, she set down the bowl quickly, and ran from the room crying, “Monsieur, Monsieur!” The cry brought the aged Abbé Colot to the place, and he entered in haste, uttering, as he did so, a prayer of thanks that his little patient lived.
“Ah! my child; you are awake, then. Glory be to God for this hour.”
Beatrix pressed her hands to her eyes.
“Whose house is this?” she asked.
“It is my house—you have been very ill here. They brought you to me from the Place Kleber. Ah, mon enfant, there is no more Place Kleber—no more Strasburg. We live in the vaults; we do not see the sun. You are very weak, Madame.”
She sighed, and laid her pretty head upon the pillow.
“If I only could remember, Monsieur!” she said. “I have seen so many things. It is all night—night.”
“But it will be day soon, my child.”
Guillaumette chimed in with her word.
“And here is the beautiful soup, Madame. Oh! Madame, what soup it is. And nothing soon to eat but the fat geese’s livers and the horses’ bones. I do not love the geese—not at all, Madame. And you have been so ill, so ill. Every day I said, ‘She will die to-day.’ Was it not so, Monsieur? Is she not to drink the beautiful soup?”