“He is always good and wise,” whispered the dying child; “so good, so wise.”

How quickly it was over after that!

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

A TACITURN FRENCHWOMAN.

Minima was so much worse that night, that Monsieur Laurentie gave me permission to sit up with Mademoiselle Therese, to watch beside her.  There was a kindly and unselfish disposition about Monsieur le Cure which it was impossible to resist, or even gainsay.  His own share of the trouble, anxiety, and grief, was so large, that he seemed to stand above us all, and be naturally our director and ruler.  But to-night, when I begged to stay with Minima, he conceded the point without a word.

Mademoiselle Therese was the most silent woman I ever met.  She could pass a whole day without uttering a word, and did not seem to suffer any ennui from her silence.  In the house she wore always, like the other inhabitants of the village, men and women, soundless felt socks, which slipped readily into the wooden sabots used for walking out-of-doors.  I was beginning to learn to walk in sabots myself, for the time was drawing rapidly near when otherwise I should be barefoot.

With this taciturn Frenchwoman I entered upon my night-watch by Minima, whose raving no one could understand but myself.  The long, dark hours seemed interminable.  Mademoiselle sat knitting a pair of gray stockings in the intervals of attendance upon our patients.  The subdued glimmer of the night-lamp, the ticking of the clock, the chimes every quarter of an hour from the church-tower, all conspired to make me restless and almost nervous.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, at last, “talk to me.  I cannot bear this tranquillity.  Tell me something.”

“What can I tell you, madame?” she inquired, in a pleasant tone.

“Tell me about those people I saw this morning,” I answered.

“It is a long history,” she said, her face kindling, as if this were a topic that excited her; and she rolled up her knitting, as though she could not trust herself to continue that while she was talking; “all the world knows it here, and we never talk of it now.  Bat you are a stranger; shall I tell it you?”

I had hit upon the only subject that could unlock her lips.  It was the night-time too.  At night one is naturally more communicative than in the broad light of day.

“Madame,” she said, in an agitated voice, “you have observed already that my brother is not like other cures.  He has his own ideas, his own sentiments.  Everybody knows him at this moment as the good Cure of Ville-en-bois; but when he came here first, thirty years ago, all the world called him infidel, heretic, atheist.  It was because he would make many changes in the church and parish.  The church had been famous for miracles; but Francis did not believe in them, and he would not encourage them.  There used to be pilgrimages to it from all the country round; and crowds of pilgrims, who spend much money.  There was a great number of crutches left at the shrine of the Virgin by cripples who had come here by their help, but walked away without them.  He cleared them all away, and called them rubbish.  So every one said he was an infidel—­you understand?”