recluse. A long
shiver traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she
half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and
clasping her feet in her hands as though to warm them,--

"Oh, how cold it is!"

"Poor woman!" said Oudarde, with great compassion, "would you like a
little fire?"

She shook her head in token of refusal.

"Well," resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; "here is some
hippocras which will warm you; drink it."

Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied,
"Water."

Oudarde persisted,--"No, sister, that is no beverage for January. You
must drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of maize, which
we have baked for you."

She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, "Black
bread."

"Come," said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity,
and unfastening her woolen cloak, "here is a cloak which is a little
warmer than yours."

She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and
replied, "A sack."

"But," resumed the good Oudarde, "you must have perceived to some
extent, that yesterday was a festival."

"I do perceive it," said the recluse; "'tis two days now since I have
had any water in my crock."

She added, after a silence, "'Tis a festival, I am forgotten. People do
well. Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it? Cold
charcoal makes cold ashes."

And as though fatigued with having said so much, she dropped her head on
her knees again. The simple and charitable Oudarde, who fancied that
she understood from her last words that she was complaining of the cold,
replied innocently, "Then you would like a little fire?"

"Fire!" said the sacked nun, with a strange accent; "and will you also
make a little for the poor little one who has been beneath the sod for
these fifteen years?"

Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed, she had
raised herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her thin,
white hand towards the child, who was regarding her with a look of
astonishment. "Take away that child!" she cried. "The Egyptian woman is
about to pass by."

Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead struck the
stone, with the sound of one stone against another stone. The three
women thought her dead. A moment later, however, she moved, and they
beheld her drag herself, on her knees and elbows, to the corner where
t