what I say, my child,"
he added with a quaint air of deference and apology. "I am very old and
very small, and only take up a very little room. I can make myself very
scarce; you shall hardly know that I am here. They forced me to it much
against my will.... But they are strong and I am weak, how could I deny
them since they put me here. After all," he concluded naively, "perhaps
it is the will of le bon Dieu, and He knows best, my child, He knows
best."

The shoes evidently refused to respond any further to the old man's
efforts at polishing them. He contemplated them now, with a whimsical
look of regret on his furrowed face, then set them down on the floor and
slipped his stockinged feet into them.

Marguerite was silently watching him, still leaning on her elbow.
Evidently her brain was still numb and fatigued, for she did not seem
able to grasp all that the old man said. She smiled to herself too as
she watched him. How could she look upon him as a jailer? He did not
seem at all like a Jacobin or a Terrorist, there was nothing of the
dissatisfied democrat, of the snarling anarchist ready to lend his hand
to any act of ferocity directed against a so-called aristocrat, about
this pathetic little figure in the ragged soutane and worn shoes.

He seemed singularly bashful too and ill at ease, and loath to meet
Marguerite's great, ardent eyes, which were fixed questioningly upon
him.

"You must forgive me, my daughter," he said shyly, "for concluding my
toilet before you. I had hoped to be quite ready before you woke, but I
had some trouble with my shoes; except for a little water and soap the
prison authorities will not provide us poor captives with any means of
cleanliness and tidiness, and le bon Dieu does love a tidy body as well
as a clean soul.

"But there, there," he added fussily, "I must not continue to gossip
like this. You would like to get up, I know, and refresh your face and
hands with a little water. Oh! you will see how well I have thought it
out. I need not interfere with you at all, and when you make your little
bit of toilette, you will feel quite alone... just as if the old man was
not there."

He began busying himself about the room, dragging the rickety,
rush-bottomed chairs forward. There were four of these in the room, and
he began forming a kind of bulwark with them, placing two side by side,
then piling the two others up above.

"You will see, my child, you will see!" he kept repeating a