ow him to
cross himself, but insisted upon leading him away.

'Come! Come! for I am very hungry. You must be hungry too.'

La Teuse had laid out the breakfast beneath two big mulberry trees,
whose spreading branches formed a sheltering roof at the bottom of the
little garden. The sun, which had at last succeeded in dissipating
the stormy-looking vapours of early morning, was warming the beds
of vegetables, while the mulberry-trees cast a broad shadow over the
rickety table, on which were laid two cups of milk and some thick slices
of bread.

'You see how nice it looks,' said Desiree, delighted at breakfasting in
the fresh air.

She was already cutting some of the bread into strips, which she ate
with eager appetite. And as she saw La Teuse still standing in front of
them, she said, 'Why don't you eat something?'

'I shall, presently,' the old servant answered. 'My soup is warming.'

Then, after a moment's silence, looking with admiration at the girl's
big bites, she said to the priest: 'It is quite a pleasure to see her.
Doesn't she make you feel hungry, Monsieur le Cure? You should force
yourself.'

Abbe Mouret smiled as he glanced at his sister. 'Yes, yes,' he murmured;
'she gets on famously, she grows fatter every day.'

'That's because I eat,' said Desiree. 'If you would eat you would get
fat, too. Are you ill again? You look very melancholy. I don't want to
have it all over again, you know. I was so very lonely when they took
you away to cure you.'

'She is right,' said La Teuse. 'You don't behave reasonably, Monsieur le
Cure. You can't expect to be strong, living, as you do, on two or three
crumbs a day, as though you were a bird. You don't make blood; and
that's why you are so pale. Don't you feel ashamed of keeping as thin as
a lath when we are so fat; we who are only women? People will begin to
think that we gobble up everything and leave you nothing but the empty
plates.'

Then both La Teuse and Desiree, brimful of health and strength, scolded
him affectionately. His eyes seemed very large and bright, but empty,
expressionless. He was still gently smiling.

'I am not ill,' he said; 'I have nearly finished my milk.' He had
swallowed two mouthfuls of it, but had not touched the bread.

'The animals, now,' said Desiree, thoughtfully, 'seem to get on much
more comfortably than we do. The fowls never have headaches, have they?
The rabbits grow as fat as ever one wants them to be. And you never saw
m