Volume II Part 43 (1/2)
When she begs you, with tears in her eyes, to spare these rags, which she has had so much trouble to collect, it is not for her, but for her child! This poor little cap, which you have made so much fun of, is laughable, perhaps; yet only to look at it makes me feel like weeping.
I avow it. Laugh at us both, Mont Saint Jean and me, if you will.” The prisoners did not laugh. La Louve even looked sadly at the little cap she held in her hand. ”Come, now!” continued Fleur-de-Marie, wiping her eyes with the back of her white and delicate hand; ”I know you are not so hard. You torment Mont Saint Jean from want of employment, not from cruelty. But you forget that she has her child. Could she hold it in her arms that it should protect her, not only would you not strike her, for fear of hurting the poor innocent, but if it was cold, you would give to its mother all you could to cover it, eh, La Louve?”
”It is true: who would not pity a child?”
”It is very plain.”
”If it was hungry you would take the bread out of your own mouth; would you not, La Louve?”
”Yes, and willingly. I am no worse than others.”
”Nor we neither.”
”A poor little innocent!”
”Who would have a heart to hurt it?”
”Must be a monster!”
”No hearts!”
”Wild beasts!”
”I told you truly,” said Fleur-de-Marie. ”That you were not cruel. You are kind; your error is not reflecting that Mont Saint Jean deserves as much compa.s.sion as though she had her child in her arms, that's all.”
”That's all!” cried La Louve, with warmth; ”no, that's not all. You were right, La Goualeuse; we were cowards, and you were brave in daring to tell us so; and you are brave in not trembling after having told us. You see we were right in constantly insisting that _you were not one of us_--it must always come to that. It vexes me; but so it is. We were all wrong just now. You were pluckier than the whole gang of us!”
”That's true; this little blonde must have had courage to tell us the truth right in our faces.”
”After all, it is true, when we strike Mont Saint Jean, we do strike her child.”
”I didn't think of that.”
”Nor I either.”
”But La Goualeuse thinks of everything.”
”And to strike a child is shameful!”
”There isn't one of us capable of doing it.”
”Nothing is more easily moved than popular pa.s.sion-nothing more abrupt and rapid than the return from evil to good and from good to evil.” The few simple and touching words from Fleur-de-Marie had caused a sudden reaction in favor of Mont Saint Jean, who wept gently.
Suddenly La Louve, violent and hasty in everything, took the little cap she held in her hand, made a kind of purse of it, fumbled in her pocket, and drew out twenty sous, threw them into the cap, and cried, presenting it to her companions, ”I give twenty sous toward buying baby-linen for Mont Saint Jean. We'll cut it all out and sew it ourselves, so that the making-up sha'n't cost a copper!”
”Yes, yes.”
”That's it! let us club together.”
”I'm agreed!”
”Famous idea!”