"It should go to the poor. It belongs to them. It was all coined out of their hearts and their bodies."
"Then you have no hope for yourself:—you?"
"I?"
She muttered the word dreamily; and raised her aching eyelids, and stared in stupefaction at the old, haggard, dark, ravenous face of Pitchou.
"Pshaw! You cannot cheat me that way," said the woman, moving away through the orchard branches, muttering to herself. "As if a thing of hell like you ever served like a slave all these years, on any other hope than the hope of the gold! Well,—as for me,—I never pretend to lie in that fashion. If it had not been for the hope of a share in the gold, I would never have eaten for seventeen years the old wretch's mouldy crusts and lentil-washings."
She hobbled, grumbling on her way back to the house, through the russet shadows and the glowing gold of the orchards.
Folle-Farine sat by the water, musing on the future which had opened to her with the woman's words of greed.
Before another day had sped, it was possible,—so even said one who hated her, and begrudged her every bit and drop that she had taken at the miser's board,—possible that she would enter into the heritage of all that this long life, spent in rapacious greed and gain, had gathered together.
One night earlier, paradise itself would have seemed to open before her with such a hope; for she would have hastened to the feet of Arslàn, and there poured all treasure that chance might have given her, and would have cried out of the fullness of her heart, "Take, enjoy, be free, do as you will. So that you make the world of men own your greatness, I will live as a beggar all the years of my life, and think myself richer than kings!"
But now, what use would it be, though she were called to an empire? She would not dare to say to him, as a day earlier she would have said with her first breath, "All that is mine is thine."