“Here is your protegee,” said the old gentleman, presenting to Veronique a feeble, suffering woman, apparently about thirty years of age.

“Are you Catherine Curieux?” asked Madame Graslin.

“Yes, madame.”

Veronique looked at Catherine for a moment.  She was rather tall, well-made, and fair; her features wore an expression of extreme gentleness which the beautiful gray tones of the eyes did not contradict.  The outline of the face, the shape of the brow had a nobility both simple and august, such as we sometimes meet with in country regions among very young girls,—­a sort of flower of beauty, which field labors, the constant cares of the household, the burning of the sun, and want of personal care, remove with terrible rapidity.  Her movements had that ease of motion characteristic of country girls, to which certain habits unconsciously contracted in Paris gave additional grace.  If Catherine had remained in the Correze she would by this time have looked like an old woman, wrinkled and withered; her complexion, once rosy, would have coarsened; but Paris, though it paled her, had preserved her beauty.  Illness, toil, and grief had endowed her with the mysterious gifts of melancholy, the inward vitalizing thought, which is lacking to poor country-folk whose lives are almost animal.  Her dress, full of that Parisian taste which all women, even the least coquettish, contract so readily, distinguished her still further from an ordinary peasant-woman.  In her ignorance as to what was before her, and having no means of judging Madame Graslin, she appeared very shy and shame-faced.

“Do you still love Farrabesche?” asked Veronique, when Grossetete left them for a moment.

“Yes, madame,” she replied coloring.

“Why, then, having sent him a thousand francs during his imprisonment, did you not join him after his release?  Have you any repugnance to him?  Speak to me as though I were your mother.  Are you afraid he has become altogether corrupt; or did you fear he no longer wanted you?”

“Neither, madame; but I do not know how to read or write, and I was serving a very exacting old lady; she fell ill and I had to nurse her.  Though I knew the time when Jacques would be released, I could not get away from Paris until after the lady’s death.  She did not leave me anything, notwithstanding my devotion to her interests and to her personally.  After that I wanted to be cured of an ailment caused by night-watching and hard work, and as I had used up my savings, I resolved to go to the hospital of Saint-Louis, which I have just left, cured.”

“Very good, my child,” said Madame Graslin, touched by this simple explanation.  “But tell me now why you abandoned your parents so abruptly, why you left your child behind you, and why you did not send any news of yourself, or get some one to write for you.”

For all answer Catherine wept.