“No, quite near.  Only, it must have begun already.  And then,” added he, a little disconcerted, “it is the hour when madame wants me.”

“Ah!  Do you teach her this thing you are professor of?  What do you call it?”

“Massage.  We have learned it from the ancients.  Yes, there she is ringing for me, and some one will come to fetch me.  Shall I tell her you are here?”

“No, no; I prefer to go there at once.”

“But you have no admission ticket.”

“Bah!  I will tell them I am Jansoulet’s mother, come to hear him judged.”  Poor mother, she spoke truer than she knew.

“Wait, Mme. Francoise.  I will give you some one to show you the way, at least.”

“Oh, you know, I have never been able to put up with servants.  I have a tongue.  There are people in the streets.  I shall find my way.”

He made a last attempt, without letting her see all his thought.  “Take care; his enemies are going to speak against him in the Chamber.  You will hear things to hurt you.”

Oh, the beautiful smile of belief and maternal pride with which she answered:  “Don’t I know better than them all what my child is worth?  Could anything make me mistaken in him?  I should have to be very ungrateful then.  Get along with you!”

And shaking her head with its flapping cap wings, she set off fiercely indignant.

With head erect and upright bearing the old woman strode along under the great arcades which they had told her to follow, a little troubled by the incessant noise of the carriages, and by the idleness of this walk, unaccompanied by the faithful distaff which had never quitted her for fifty years.  All these ideas of enmities and persecutions, the mysterious words of the priest, the guarded talk of Cabassu, frightened and agitated her.  She found in them the meaning of the presentiments which had so overpowered her as to snatch her from her habits, her duties, the care of the house and of her invalid.  Besides, since Fortune had thrown on her and her son this golden mantle with its heavy folds, Mme. Jansoulet had never become accustomed to it, and was always waiting for the sudden disappearance of these splendours.  Who knows if the break-up was not going to begin this time?  And suddenly, through these sombre thoughts, the remembrance of the scene that had just passed, of the little one rubbing himself on her woollen gown, brought on her wrinkled lips a tender smile, and she murmured in her peasant tongue: 

“Oh, for the little one, at any rate.”

She crossed a magnificent square, immense, dazzling, two fountains throwing up their water in a silvery spray, then a great stone bridge, and at the end was a square building with statues on its front, a railing with carriages drawn up before it, people going on, numbers of policemen.  It was there.  She pushed through the crowd bravely and came up to the high glass doors.