The porter laughed carelessly, and having lit his pipe to his satisfaction went his way.

A great many more customers now came to Martine’s stall, and for upwards of an hour there was shrill argument and driving of bargains till she had pretty well cleared her counter of all its stock.  Then she sat down again and looked to right and left of the market-place for any sign of the Patoux children returning with her little son, but there was not a glimpse of them anywhere.

“I wonder what they are doing!” she thought—­“And I wonder what sort of a Cardinal it is they have taken the child to see!  These great princes of the Church care nothing for the poor,—­the very Pope allows half Italy to starve while he shuts himself up with his treasures in the Vatican;—­what should a great Cardinal care for my poor little Fabien!  If the stories of the Christ were true, and one could only take the child to Him, then indeed there might be a chance of cure!—­but it is all a lie,—­and the worst of the lie is that it would give us all so much comfort and happiness if it were only true!  It is like holding out a rope to a drowning man and snatching it away again.  And when the rope goes, the sooner one sinks under the waves the better!”

VI.

The Cardinal was still in his room alone with the boy Manuel, when Madame Patoux, standing at her door under the waving tendrils of the “creeping jenny” and shading her eyes from the radiance of the sun, saw her children approaching with Fabien Doucet between them.

“Little wretches that they are!” she murmured—­“Once let them get an idea into their heads and nothing will knock it out!  Now I shall have to tell Monseigneur that they are here,—­what an impertinence it seems!—­and yet he is so gentle, and has such a good heart that perhaps he will not mind . . .”

Here she broke off her soliloquy as the children came up, Babette eagerly demanding to know where the Cardinal was.  Madame Patoux set her arms akimbo and surveyed the little group of three half-pityingly, half derisively.

“The Cardinal has not left his room since breakfast,” she answered—­ “He is playing Providence already to a poor lad lost in the streets, and for that matter lost in the world, without father or mother to look after him,—­he was found in Notre Dame last night,—­”

“Why, mother,” interrupted Henri—­“how could a boy get into Notre Dame last night?  When Babette and I went there, nobody was in the church at all,—­and we left one candle burning all alone in the darkness,—­and when we came out the Suisse swore at us for having gone in, and then locked the door.”

“Well, if one must be so exact, the boy was not found actually in Notre Dame, obstinate child,” returned his mother impatiently—­“It happened at midnight,—­the good Cardinal heard someone crying and went to see who it was.  And he found a poor boy outside the Cathedral weeping as if his heart were breaking, and leaning his head against the hard door for a pillow.  And he brought him back and gave him his own bed to sleep in;—­and the lad is with him now.”