“Madame,” he said, in angry remonstrance, “you are disobeying Monsieur le Cure.  If you catch the fever, and die while you are a pagan, it will be impossible for you to go to heaven.  It would be a hundred times better for me to die, who have taken my first communion.”

“But who lives there?” I asked.

“They are very wicked people,” he answered, emphatically; “no one goes near them, except Monsieur le Cure, and he would go and nurse the devil himself, if he had the fever in his parish.  They became wicked before my time, and Monsieur le Cure has forbidden us to speak of them with rancor, so we do not speak of them at all.”

I walked back in sadness, wondering at this misery and solitariness by the side of the healthy, simple society of the lonely village, with its interwoven family interests.  As I passed through the street again, I heard the click of the hand-looms in most of the dwellings, and saw the pale-faced weavers, in their white and tasselled caps, here a man and there a woman, look after me, while they suspended their work for a moment.  Every door was open; the children ran in and out of any house, playing together as if they were of one family; the women were knitting in companies under the eaves.  Who were these pariahs, whose name even was banished from every tongue?  I must ask the cure himself.

But I had no opportunity that day.  When I returned to the sick-ward, I found Monsieur Laurentie pacing slowly up and down the long room, with Jean’s little son in his arms, to whom he was singing in a low, soft voice, scarcely louder than a whisper.  His eyes, when they met mine, were glistening with tears, and he shook his head mournfully.

I went on to look at Minima.  She was lying quiet, too weak and exhausted to be violent, but chattering all the time in rapid, childish sentences.  I could do nothing for her, and I went back to the hearth, where the cure was now standing, looking sadly at the child in his arms.  He bade me sit down on a tabouret that stood there, and laid his little burden on my lap.

“The child has no mother, madame,” he said; “let him die in a woman’s arms.”

I had never seen any one die, not even my father, and I shrank from seeing it.  But the small white face rested helplessly against my arm, and the blue eyes unclosed for a moment, and gazed into mine, almost with a smile.  Monsieur Laurentie called in Jean and Pierre, and they knelt before us in silence, broken only by sobs.  In the room there were children’s voices talking about their toys, and calling to one another in shrill, feverish accents.  How many deaths such as this was I to witness?

“Monsieur le Cure!” murmured the failing voice of the little child.

“What is it, my little one?” he said, stooping over him.

“Shall I play sometimes with the little child Jesus?”

The words fell one by one from the feeble lips.

“Yes, mon cheri, yes.  The holy child Jesus knows what little children need,” answered the cure.