"Bread—bread—bread!" he muttered. "To die for bread!"
At the words, all the quick resource and self-reliance which the hard life she led had sharpened and strengthened in her, awoke amidst all the dreams and passions, and meditations of her mystical faiths, and her poetic ignorance.
The boldness and the independence of her nature roused themselves; she had prayed for him to the gods, and to the gods given herself for him—that was well—if they kept their faith. But if they forsook it? The blood rushed back to her heart with its old proud current; alone, she swore to herself to save him. To save him in the gods' despite.
In the street that day, she had found the half of a roll of black bread. It had lain in the mud, none claiming it; a sulky lad passed it in scorn, a beggar with gold in his wallet kicked it aside with his crutch; she took it and put it by for her supper; so often some stripe or some jibe replaced a begrudged meal for her at Flamma's board.
That was all she had. A crust dry as a bone, which could do nothing towards saving him, which could be of no more use to pass those clinched teeth, and warm those frozen veins, than so much of the wet sand gathered up from the river-shore. Neither could there be any wood, which, if brought in and lit, would burn. All the timber was green and full of sap, and all, for a score square leagues around, was at that hour drenched with water.
She knew that the warmth of fire to dry the deadly dampness in the air, the warmth of wine to quicken the chillness and the torpor of the reviving life, were what were wanted beyond all other things. She had seen famine in all its stages, and she knew the needs and dangers of that fell disease.
There was not a creature in all the world who would have given her so much as a loaf or a fagot; even if the thought of human aid had ever dawned on her. As it was, she never even dreamed of it; every human hand—to the rosy fist of the smallest and fairest child—was always clinched against her; she would have sooner asked for honey from a knot of snakes, or sought a bed of roses in a swarm of wasps, as have begged mercy or aid at any human hearth.
She knew nothing, either, of any social laws that might have made such need as this a public care on public alms. She was used to see men, women, and children perishing of want; she had heard people curse the land that bore, and would not nourish, them. She was habituated to work hard for every bit or drop that passed her lips; she lived amidst multitudes who did the same; she knew nothing of any public succor to which appeal could in such straits be made.
If bread were not forthcoming, a man or a woman had to die for lack of it, as Manon Dax and Marcellin had done; that seemed to her a rule of fate, against which there was no good in either resistance or appeal.
What could she do? she pondered.