Celeste Colleville here said timidly:--

"Mamma, will you permit me to give a toast?"

The good girl had noticed the dull, bewildered look of her godmother,
neglected and forgotten,--she, the mistress of that house, wearing
almost the expression of a dog that is doubtful which master to obey,
looking from the face of her terrible sister-in-law to that of
Thuillier, consulting each countenance, and oblivious of herself; but
joy on the face of that poor helot, accustomed to be nothing, to
repress her ideas, her feelings, had the effect of a pale wintry sun
behind a mist; it barely lighted her faded, flabby flesh. The gauze
cap trimmed with dingy flowers, the hair ill-dressed, the gloomy brown
gown, with no ornament but a thick gold chain--all, combined with the
expression of her countenance, stimulated the affection of the young
Celeste, who--alone in the world--knew the value of that woman
condemned to silence but aware of all about her, suffering from all
yet consoling herself in God and in the girl who now was watching her.

"Yes, let the dear child give us her little toast," said la Peyrade to
Madame Colleville.

"Go on, my daughter," cried Colleville; "here's the hermitage still to
be drunk--and it's hoary with age," he added.

"To my kind godmother!" said the girl, lowering her glass respectfully
before Madame Thuillier, and holding it towards her.

The poor woman, startled, looked through a veil of tears first at her
husband, and then at Brigitte; but her position in the family was so