Knowing all the turns and steps of the obscure passages, she quickly found her way to the store-chambers where such food and fuel as were wanted in the house were stored.
The latter was burnt, and the former eaten, sparingly and grudgingly, but the store of both was at this season of the year fairly abundant. It had more than once happened that the mill had been cut off from all communication with the outer world by floods that reached its upper casements, and Claudis Flamma was provided against any such accidents; the more abundantly as he had more than once found it a lucrative matter in such seasons of inundation to lower provisions from his roof to boats floating below, when the cotters around were in dire need and ready to sell their very souls for a bag of rice or string of onions.
Folle-Farine opened the shutter of the storeroom and let in the faint gray glimmer from the clearing skies.
A bat which had been resting from the storm against the rafters fluttered violently against the lattice; a sparrow driven down the chimney in the hurricane flew up from one of the shelves with a twittering outcry.
She paused to open the lattice for them both, and set them free to fly forth into the still sleeping world; then she took an old rush basket that hung upon a nail, and filled it with the best of such homely food as was to be found there—loaves, and meats, and rice, and oil, and a flask of the richest wine—wine of the south, of the hue of the violet, sold under secrecy at a high charge and profit.
That done, she tied together as large a bundle of brushwood and of fagots as she could push through the window, which was broad and square, and thrust it out by slow degrees; put her basket through likewise, and lowered it carefully to the ground; then followed them herself with the agility born of long practice, and dropped on the grass beneath.
She waited but to close and refasten the shutter from without, then threw the mass of fagots on her shoulders, and carrying in her arms the osier basket, took her backward way through the orchards to the river.
She had not taken either bit or drop for her own use.
She was well used to carry burdens as heavy as the mules bare, and to walk under them unassisted for many leagues to the hamlets and markets roundabout. But even her strength of bronze had become fatigued; she felt frozen to the bone; her clothes were saturated with water, and her limbs were chill and stiff. Yet she trudged on, unblenching and unpausing, over the soaked earth, and through the swollen water and the reeds; keeping always by the side of the stream that was so angry in the darkness; by the side of the gray flooded sands and the rushes that were blowing with a sound like the sea.
She met no living creature except a fox, who rushed between her feet, holding in its mouth a screaming chicken.