mother was doubly wounded. The half-rustic artisan in her
was outraged in the tenderness, the respect, the sweet unreasonableness
the woman of the provinces feels towards a full linen cupboard--a
cupboard filled piece by piece, full of relics of past struggles, whose
contents grow finer little by little, the first token of comfort, of
wealth, in the house. Besides, she had held the distaff from morning
till night, and if the housewife in her was angry, the spinner could
have wept at the profanation. At last, unable to contain herself longer,
she rose, and actively, her little shawl displaced at each movement, she
set herself to pick up, straighten, and carefully fold this magnificent
linen, as she used to do in the fields of Saint-Romans, when she gave
herself the treat of a grand washing-day, with twenty washerwomen, the
clothes-baskets flowing over with floating whiteness, and the sheets
flapping in the morning wind on the clothes-lines. She was in the midst
of this occupation, forgetting her journey, forgetting Paris, even
the place where she was, when a stout, thick-set, bearded man, with
varnished boots and a velvet jacket, over the torso of a bull, came into
the linen-room.

"What! Cabassu!"

"You here, Mme. Francoise! What a surprise!" said the _masseur_, staring
like a bronze figure.

"Yes, my brave Cabassu, it is I. I have just arrived; and as you see, I
am at work already. It made my heart bleed to see all this muddle."

"You came up for the sitting, then?"

"What sitting?"

"Why, the grand sitting of the legislative body. It's do-day."

"Dear me, no. What has that got to do with me? I should understand
nothing at all about it. No, I came because I wanted to know my little
Jansoulets, and then, I was beginning to feel uneasy. I have written
several times without getting an answer. I was afraid that there was a
child sick, that Bernard's business was going wrong--all sorts of ideas.
At last I got seriously worried, and came away at once. They are well
here, they tell me."

"Yes, Mme. Francoise. Thank God, every one is quite well."

"And Bernard. His business--is that going on as he wants it to?"

"Well, you know one has always one's little worries in life--still,
I don't think he should complain. But, now I think of it, you must be
hungry. I will go and make them bring you something."

He was going to ring, more at home and at ease than the old mother
herself. She stopped him.

"No, no, I don't