All the green, shadowy, tranquil ways grew strange to her; the earth shook under her feet; the heavens circled around her:——and Pitchou, looking on her, thought that she was stunned by the loss of the miser's treasure!
She! in whose whole burning veins there ran only one passion, in whose crushed brain there was only one thought—"Will he forget—forget quite—when he is free?"
The old woman stretched her head forward, and cackled out eager, hissing, tumultuous words:
"Hast not heard? No? Well, see, then. Some said you should be sent for, but the priest and I said No. Neither Law nor Church count the love-begotten. Flamma died worth forty thousand francs, set aside all his land and household things. God rest his soul! He was a man. He forgot my faithful service, true, but the good almoner will remember all that to me. Forty thousand francs! What a man! And hardly a nettle boiled in oil would he eat some days together. Where does this money go—eh, eh? Canst guess?"
"Go?"
Pitchou watched her grimly, and laughed aloud:
"Ah, ah! I know. So you dared to hope, too? Oh, fool! what thing did ever he hate as he hated your shadow on the wall? The money, and the lands, and the things—every coin, every inch, every crumb—is willed away to the Church, to the holy chapter in the town yonder, to hold for the will of God and the glory of his kingdom. And masses will be said for his soul, daily, in the cathedral; and the gracious almoner has as good as said that the mill shall be let to Francvron, the baker, who is old and has no women to his house; and that I shall dwell here and manage all things, and rule Francvron, and end my days in the chimney corner. And I will stretch a point and let you lie in the hay to-night, but to-morrow you must tramp, for the devil's daughter and Holy Church will scarce go to roost together."
Folle-Farine heard her stupidly, and stupidly gazed around; she did not understand. She had never had any other home, and, in a manner, even in the apathy of a far greater woe, she clove to this place; to its familiarity, and its silence, and its old woodland-ways.
"Go!"—she looked down through the aisles of the boughs dreamily; in a vague sense she felt the sharpness of desolation that repulses the creature whom no human heart desires, and whom no human voice bids stay.
"Yes. Go; and that quickly," said the peasant with a sardonic grin. "I serve the Church now. It is not for me to harbor such as thee; nor is it fit to take the bread of the poor and the pious to feed lips as accursed as are thine. Thou mayst lie here to-night—I would not be overharsh—but tarry no longer. Take a sup and a bit, and to bed. Dost hear?"