Meanwhile, Mother Fetu, still rolling her head to and fro, had stretched out her hand, and the parcel of linen had vanished in the bed.  Then she resumed: 

“Oh, what a couple of good souls you are!  I don’t wish to offend you; I only say it because it’s true.  When you have seen one, you have seen the other.  Oh, dear Lord! give me a hand and help me to turn round.  Kind-hearted people understand one another.  Yes, yes, they understand one another.”

“Good-bye, Mother Fetu,” said Helene, leaving the doctor in sole possession.  “I don’t think I shall call to-morrow.”

The next day, however, found her in the attic again.  The old woman was sound asleep, but scarcely had she opened her eyes and recognized Helene in her black dress sitting on the chair than she exclaimed: 

“He has been here—­oh, I really don’t know what he gave me to take, but I am as stiff as a stick.  We were talking about you.  He asked me all kinds of questions; whether you were generally sad, and whether your look was always the same.  Oh, he’s such a good man!”

Her words came more slowly, and she seemed to be waiting to see by the expression of Helene’s face what effect her remarks might have on her, with that wheedling, anxious air of the poor who are desirous of pleasing people.  No doubt she fancied she could detect a flush of displeasure mounting to her benefactress’s brow, for her huge, puffed-up face, all eagerness and excitement, suddenly clouded over; and she resumed, in stammering accents: 

“I am always asleep.  Perhaps I have been poisoned.  A woman in the Rue de l’Annonciation was killed by a drug which the chemist gave her in mistake for another.”

That day Helene lingered for nearly half an hour in Mother Fetu’s room, hearing her talk of Normandy, where she had been born, and where the milk was so good.  During a silence she asked the old woman carelessly:  “Have you known the doctor a long time?”

Mother Fetu, lying on her back, half-opened her eyes and again closed them.

“Oh, yes!” she answered, almost in a whisper.  “For instance, his father attended to me before ’48, and he accompanied him then.”

“I have been told the father was a very good man.”

“Yes, but a little cracked.  The son is much his superior.  When he touches you you would think his hands were of velvet.”

Silence again fell.

“I advise you to do everything he tells you,” at last said Helene.  “He is very clever; he saved my daughter.”

“To be sure!” exclaimed Mother Fetu, again all excitement.  “People ought to have confidence in him.  Why, he brought a boy to life again when he was going to be buried!  Oh, there aren’t two persons like him; you won’t stop me from saying that!  I am very lucky; I fall in with the pick of good-hearted people.  I thank the gracious Lord for it every night.  I don’t forget either of you.  You are mingled together in my prayers.  May God in His goodness shield you and grant your every wish!  May He load you with His gifts!  May He keep you a place in Paradise!”