“Has your uncle got permission to hunt crabs?”

“Hey! are not we all under a Republic that is one and indivisible?” cried the uncle from his station.

“We are under a Directory,” said the doctor, “and I know of no law which allows a man to come from Vatan and fish in the territory of Issoudun”; then he said to Flore, “Have you got a mother, little one!”

“No, monsieur; and my father is in the asylum at Bourges.  He went mad from a sun-stroke he got in the fields.”

“How much do you earn?”

“Five sous a day while the season lasts; I catch ’em as far as the Braisne.  In harvest time, I glean; in winter, I spin.”

“You are about twelve years old?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Do you want to come with me?  You shall be well fed and well dressed, and have some pretty shoes.”

“No, my niece will stay with me; I am responsible to God and man for her,” said Uncle Brazier who had come up to them.  “I am her guardian, d’ye see?”

The doctor kept his countenance and checked a smile which might have escaped most people at the aspect of the man.  The guardian wore a peasant’s hat, rotted by sun and rain, eaten like the leaves of a cabbage that has harbored several caterpillars, and mended, here and there, with white thread.  Beneath the hat was a dark and sunken face, in which the mouth, nose, and eyes, seemed four black spots.  His forlorn jacket was a bit of patchwork, and his trousers were of crash towelling.

“I am Doctor Rouget,” said that individual; “and as you are the guardian of the child, bring her to my house, in the place Saint-Jean.  It will not be a bad day’s work for you; nor for her, either.”

Without waiting for an answer, and sure that Uncle Brazier would soon appear with his pretty “rabouilleuse,” Doctor Rouget set spurs to his horse and returned to Issoudun.  He had hardly sat down to dinner, before his cook announced the arrival of the citoyen and citoyenne Brazier.

“Sit down,” said the doctor to the uncle and niece.

Flore and her guardian, still barefooted, looked round the doctor’s dining-room with wondering eyes; never having seen its like before.

The house, which Rouget inherited from the Descoings estate, stands in the middle of the place Saint-Jean, a so-called square, very long and very narrow, planted with a few sickly lindens.  The houses in this part of town are better built than elsewhere, and that of the Descoings’s was one of the finest.  It stands opposite to the house of Monsieur Hochon, and has three windows in front on the first storey, and a porte-cochere on the ground-floor which gives entrance to a courtyard, beyond which lies the garden.  Under the archway of the porte-cochere is the door of a large hall lighted by two windows on the street.  The kitchen is behind this hall, part of the space being used for a staircase which leads to the upper floor and to the attic above that.  Beyond the kitchen is a wood-shed and wash-house, a stable for two horses and a coach-house, over which are some little lofts for the storage of oats, hay, and straw, where, at that time, the doctor’s servant slept.