When she entered it, noon had just sounded from all its many clocks and chimes. The weather was hot, and she was very tired. She had not eaten any food, save some berries and green leaves, for more than forty hours. She had been refused anything to do in all places; and she had no money—except that gold of his.
There was a little tavern, vine-shaded and bright with a Quatre Saisons rose that hid its casements. She asked there, timidly, if there were any task she might do,—to fetch water, to sweep, to break wood, to drive or to stable a mule or a horse.
They took her to be a gypsy; they ordered her roughly to be gone.
Through the square window she could see food—a big juicy melon cut in halves, sweet yellow cakes, warm and crisp from the oven, a white chicken, cold and dressed with cresses, a jug of milk, an abundance of bread. And her hunger was very great.
Nine days of sharper privation than even that to which she had been inured in the penury of Yprès had made her cheeks hollow and her limbs fleshless; and a continual consuming heat and pain gnawed at her chest.
She sat on a bench that was free to all wayfarers, and looked at the food in the tavern kitchen. It tempted her with the terrible animal ravenousness begotten by long fast. She wanted to fly at it as a starved dog flies. A rosy-faced woman cut up the chicken on a china dish, singing.
Folle-Farine, outside, looked at her, and took courage from her smiling face.
"Will you give me a little work?" she murmured. "Anything—anything—so that I may get bread."
"You are a gypsy," answered the woman, ceasing to smile. "Go to your own folk."
And she would not offer her even a plate of broken victuals.