“Continue, mademoiselle, I pray you,” I said, eagerly; “do not leave off there.”

“Bien!  Monsieur le Cure and his unworthy sister had a small fortune which was spent, for the people.  He begged for them; he worked with them; he learned to do many things to help them.  He lives for them and them only.  He has refused to leave them for better positions.  They are not ungrateful; they love him, they lean upon him.”

“But the Pineaux?” I suggested.

“Bah!  I had forgotten them.  Their factory was burnt at the same time.  It is more than a kilometre from here; but who can say how far the burning thatch might be carried on the wind?  It was insured for a large sum in a bureau in Paris.  But there were suspicions raised and questions asked.  Our sacristan, Jean, who was then a young boy, affirmed that he had seen some one carrying a lighted torch around the building, after the work-people had all fled to see after their own houses.  The bureau refused to pay, except by a process of law; and the Pineaux never began their process.  They worked the factory a few years on borrowed money; but they became poor, very poor.  Mademoiselle ceased to be devote, and did not come near the church or the confessional again.  Now they are despised and destitute.  Not a person goes near them, except my good brother, whom they hate still.  There remain but three of them, the old monsieur, who is very aged, a son, and mademoiselle, who is as old as myself.  The son has the fever, and Francis visits him almost every day.”

“It is a wretched, dreadful place,” I said, shuddering at the remembrance of it.

“They will die there probably,” she remarked, in a quiet voice, and with an expression of some weariness now the tale was told; “my brother refuses to let me go to see them.  Mademoiselle hates me, because in some part I have taken her place.  Francis says there is work enough for me at home.  Madame, I believe the good God sent you here to help us.”

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

SENT BY GOD.

I discovered that mademoiselle’s opinion was shared by all the people in Ville-en-bois, and Monsieur Laurentie favored the universal impression.  I had been sent to them by a special providence.  There was something satisfactory and consolatory to them all in my freedom from personal anxieties and cares like their own.  I had neither parent, nor husband, nor child to be attacked by the prevailing infection.  As soon as Minima had passed safely through the most dangerous stages of the fever, I was at leisure to listen to and sympathize with each one of them.  Possibly there was something in the difficulty I still experienced in expressing myself fluently which made me a better listener, and so won them to pour out their troubles into my attentive ear.  Jean and Pierre especially were devoted to me, since the child that had belonged to them had died upon my lap.