She was very tired; long want of sleep, anguish, and bodily fatigue made her dull, and too exhausted to keep long upon her feet. She looked about her for some place of rest; and she knew that if she did not husband her strength, it might fail her ere she reached him, and stretch her on a sick-bed in some hospital of the poor.
She passed two or three cottages standing by the roadside, with light gleaming through their shutters; but she did not knock at any one of them. She was afraid of spending her three copper coins; and she was too proud to seek food or lodging as an alms.
By-and-by she came to a little shed, standing where no house was. She looked into it, and saw it full of the last season's hay, dry and sweet-smelling, tenanted only by a cat rolled round in slumber.
She crept into it, and laid herself down and slept, the bright starry skies shining on her through the open space that served for entrance, the clatter of a little brook under the poplar-trees the only sound upon the quiet air.
Footsteps went past twice or thrice, and once a wagon rolled lumbering by; but no one came thither to disturb her, and she sank into a fitful heavy sleep.
At daybreak she was again afoot, always on the broad road to the southwest.
With one of her coins she bought a loaf and a draught of milk, at a hamlet through which she went. She was surprised to find that people spoke to her without a curse or taunt, and dealt with her as with any other human being.
Insensibly with the change of treatment, and with the fresh, sweet air, and with the brisk movement that bore her on her way, her heart grew lighter, and her old dauntless spirit rose again.
She would find him, she thought, as soon as ever she entered Paris; and she would watch over him, and only go near him if he needed her. And then, and then——
But her thoughts went no further. She shut the future out from her; it appalled her. Only one thing was clear before her—that she would get him the greatness that he thirsted for, if any payment of her body or her soul, her life or her death, could purchase it.