_Nom de Dieu!_ _Nom de Dieu!_"

And running to a drinking-fountain near by, he filled his basin with
water and hurried back to bathe his friend's face. Then, without further
attempt at concealment, he took from his sack the last remaining biscuit
that he had guarded with such jealous caution, and commenced crumbling
it into small bits that he introduced between the other's teeth. The
famishing man opened his eyes and ate greedily.

"But you," he asked, suddenly recollecting himself, "how comes it that
you did not eat it?"

"Oh, I!" said Jean. "I'm tough, I can wait. A good drink of Adam's ale,
and I shall be all right."

He went and filled his basin again at the fountain, emptied it at a
single draught, and came back smacking his lips in token of satisfaction
with his feast. He, too, was cadaverously pale, and so faint with hunger
that his hands were trembling like a leaf.

"Come, get up, and let's be going. We must be getting back to the
comrades, little one."

Maurice leaned on his arm and suffered himself to be helped along as
if he had been a child; never had woman's arm about him so warmed his
heart. In that extremity of distress, with death staring him in the
face, it afforded him a deliciously cheering sense of comfort to know
that someone loved and cared for him, and the reflection that that
heart, which was so entirely his, was the heart of a simple-minded
peasant, whose aspirations scarcely rose above the satisfaction of
his daily wants, for whom he had recently experienced a feeling of
repugnance, served to add to his gratitude a sensation of ineffable
joy. Was it not the brotherhood that had prevailed in the world in its
earlier days, the friendship that had existed before caste and culture
were; that friendship which unites two men and makes them one in their
common need of assistance, in the presence of Nature, the common enemy?
He felt the tie of humanity uniting him and Jean, and was proud to know
that the latter, his comforter and savior, was stronger than he; while
to Jean, who did not analyze his sensations, it afforded unalloyed
pleasure to be the instrument of protecting, in his friend, that
cultivation and intelligence which, in himself, were only rudimentary.
Since the death of his wife, who had been snatched away from him by a
frightful catastrophe, he had believed that his heart was dead, he had
sworn to have nothing more to do with those creatures, who, even when
they are not wicked and