Something like a faint grin widened the mouths of Henri and Babette at this statement made with so much distressed fervour by their angry mother,—­but the Cardinal did not smile.  His face had grown very pale and grave, almost stern.

“The children are quite right, my daughter,” he said gently,—­“I am no saint!  I have performed no miracles.  I am a poor sinner,—­ striving to do well, but alas!—­for ever striving in vain.  The days of noble living are past,—­and we are all too much fallen in the ways of error to deserve that our Lord should bless the too often half-hearted and grudging labour of his so-called servants.  Come here, ma mignonne!” he continued, calling Babette, who approached him with a curious air of half-timid boldness—­“Thou art but a very little girl,” he said, laying his thin white hand softly on her tumbled brown curls—­“Nevertheless, I should be a very foolish old man if I despised thee, or thy thoughts, or thy desire to know the truth for truth’s sake.  Therefore to-morrow thou shalt bring me this afflicted friend of thine, and though I have no divine gifts, I will do even as the Master commanded,—­I will lay my hands on him in blessing and pray that he may be healed.  More than this is not in my power, my child!—­if a miracle is to be worked, it is our dear Lord only who can work it.”

Gently he murmured his formal benediction,—­then, turning away, he entered his own room and shut the door.  Babette, grown strangely serious, turned to her brother and held out her hand, moved by one of those erratic impulses which often take sudden possession of self-willed children.

“Come into the Cathedral!” she whispered imperatively—­“Come and say an Ave.”

Not a word did the usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,—­but clutching his sister’s fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he trotted meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square into the silence and darkness of Notre Dame.  Their mother watched their little plump figures disappear with a feeling of mingled amazement and gratitude,—­miracles were surely beginning, she thought, if a few words from the Cardinal could impress Babette and Henri with an idea of the necessity of prayer!

They were not long gone, however;—­they came walking back together, still demurely hand in hand, and settled themselves quietly in a corner to study their tasks for the next day.  Babette’s doll, once attired as a fashionable Parisienne, and now degenerated into a one-eyed laundress with a rather soiled cap and apron, stuck out its composite arms in vain from the bench where it sat all askew, drooping its head forlornly over a dustpan,—­and Henri’s drum, wherewith he was wont to wake alarming echoes out of the dreamy and historical streets of Rouen, lay on its side neglected and ingloriously silent.  And, as before said, peace reigned in the Patoux household,—­even the entrance of Papa Patoux himself, fresh from his celery beds, and smelling of the earth earthy, created no particular