While Agathe made these reflections, Honorine had gone up hastily to her room; she returned with her bonnet on her head, and said to Agathe:
“Come with me.”
“Where are we going, my dear?”
“Mon Dieu! to Guillot’s cottage, to see if there is any way of assisting those poor people, and at the very least to save some of their furniture. I have a hundred francs I can give them; it’s very little, but still it will help them.”
“Oh! my good Honorine, if it were possible, I would love you even more.”
The two friends left the house, followed by Poucette and Claudine, who had ceased to weep because they hoped and divined that the ladies proposed to assist their dear ones.
In due time they reached the farmer’s cottage, where a number of people had already collected. For the announcement of a sale on execution always brings together a multitude of bargain-hunters and idlers.
A melancholy spectacle was presented to that assemblage, which would have touched their hearts, had there been any persons susceptible to emotion among those who were disputing over the purchase of an old chair.
Guillot’s wife sat at the foot of a tree, about forty yards from the house, holding her last-born child at her breast, while the two others stood at her side, hiding their faces against their mother’s skirts as if terrified by the sight of all those people. The peasant gazed with tear-dimmed eyes at her hovel and at all the poor furniture that was brought from it, to be offered for sale; then she turned her eyes on her children, and her glance said plainly:
“We have no roof to shelter us; where will they sleep to-night?”