like bits of dull gold in the warm light of the September sun.  She listened with an impassive countenance while Babette poured out her story of the great Cardinal,—­the Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whom people said was a saint,- -how he had come unexpectedly to stay two nights at the Hotel Poitiers,—­how “petite maman” had declared he was so good that even angels might visit him,—­how kind and gentle and grand he seemed,—­ “Yes,” said Babette somewhat eagerly, “there was no doubt that he looked good,—­and we have told him all about Fabien and he has promised to bless him and ask Our Lord to cure his lameness.”

“Well, and of what use is that, mignonne?” demanded Martine, clicking her knitting-needles violently and stooping over her work to wink away the sudden tears that had risen in her bold brown eyes at Babette’s enthusiastic desire to benefit her afflicted child.—­ “Asking our Lord is poor business,—­you may ask and ask, but you never get answered!”

Babette hung her curly brown head despondingly, and looked appealingly at her brother.  Now Henri was a decided cynic;—­but his sister exercised a weird fascination over him,—­a sort of power to command which he always felt more or less constrained to obey.  He stared solemnly at Martine, and then at the little Fabien, who, half rising from his mat, had listened with a visibly painful interest to Babette’s story.

“I think you might let us take Fabien and see if a Cardinal can do anything,” he said with a kind of judicial air, as of one who, though considering the case hopeless, had no objection to try a last desperate remedy.  “This one is a very old man, and he must know a good deal.  He could not do any harm.  And I am sure Babette would like to find out if there is any use at all in a Cardinal.  I should like it too.  You see we went into Notre Dame last night,—­Babette and I,—­and everything was dark,—­all the candles were out at Our Lady’s statue—­and we had only ten centimes between us.  And the candles are ten centimes each.  So we could only light one.  But we lit that one, and said an Ave for Fabien.  And the candle was all by itself in the Cathedral.  And now I think we ought to take him to the Cardinal.”

Martine shook her head, pursed up her lips, and knitted more violently than ever.

“It is all no use—­no use!” she muttered—­“There is no God,—­or if there is, He must be deaf as well as blind!”

But here suddenly the weak plaintive voice of Fabien himself piped out—­

“Oh, mother, let me go!”

Martine looked down at him.

“Let thee go?  To see the Cardinal?  Why he is nought but an old man, child, as helpless as any of us.  What dost thou think he can do for thee?”

“Nothing!” and the boy clambered up on his crutch, and stood appealingly before his mother, his fair curls blowing back in the breeze,—­“But I should like to see him.  Oh, do let me go!”

Babette caught him by the hand.