She was now sitting up in bed with hands clasped, seemingly entreating Heaven with devout fervor.  Helene allowed her to go on thus for a considerable time, and even smiled.  The old woman’s chatter, in fact, ended by lulling her into a pleasant drowsiness, and when she went off she promised to give her a bonnet and gown, as soon as she should be able to get about again.

Throughout that week Helene busied herself with Mother Fetu.  Her afternoon visit became an item in her daily life.  She felt a strange fondness for the Passage des Eaux.  She liked that steep lane for its coolness and quietness and its ever-clean pavement, washed on rainy days by the water rushing down from the heights.  A strange sensation thrilled her as she stood at the top and looked at the narrow alley with its steep declivity, usually deserted, and only known to the few inhabitants of the neighboring streets.  Then she would venture through an archway dividing a house fronting the Rue Raynouard, and trip down the seven flights of broad steps, in which lay the bed of a pebbly stream occupying half of the narrow way.  The walls of the gardens on each side bulged out, coated with a grey, leprous growth; umbrageous trees drooped over, foliage rained down, here and there an ivy plant thickly mantled the stonework, and the chequered verdure, which only left glimpses of the blue sky above, made the light very soft and greeny.  Halfway down Helene would stop to take breath, gazing at the street-lamp which hung there, and listening to the merry laughter in the gardens, whose doors she had never seen open.  At times an old woman panted up with the aid of the black, shiny, iron handrail fixed in the wall to the right; a lady would come, leaning on her parasol as on a walking-stick; or a band of urchins would run down, with a great stamping of feet.  But almost always Helene found herself alone, and this steep, secluded, shady descent was to her a veritable delight —­like a path in the depths of a forest.  At the bottom she would raise her eyes, and the sight of the narrow, precipitous alley she had just descended made her feel somewhat frightened.

She glided into the old woman’s room with the quiet and coolness of the Passage des Eaux clinging to her garments.  This woefully wretched den no longer affected her painfully.  She moved about there as if in her own rooms, opening the round attic window to admit the fresh air, and pushing the table into a corner if it came in her way.  The garret’s bareness, its whitewashed walls and rickety furniture, realized to her mind an existence whose simplicity she had sometimes dreamt of in her girlhood.  But what especially charmed her was the kindly emotion she experienced there.  Playing the part of sick nurse, hearing the constant bewailing of the old woman, all she saw and felt within the four walls left her quivering with deep pity.  In the end she awaited with evident impatience Doctor Deberle’s customary visit.  She questioned him as to Mother Fetu’s