years; we shall bring him to Monseigneur, and he will mend his leg
and make him well. Then we shall believe in saints afterwards."

Madame Patoux turned her warm red face round from the fire over
which she was bending, and stared at her precocious offspring
aghast.

"What! You will dare to address yourself to the Cardinal!" she cried
vociferously--"You will dare to trouble him with such foolishness?
Mon Dieu!--is it possible to be so wicked! But listen to me well!--
If you presume to say one saucy word to Monseigneur, you shall be
punished! What have you to do with the little Fabien Doucet?--the
poor child is sickly and diseased by the will of God."

"I don't see why it should be God's will to make a boy sickly and
diseased--" began the irrepressible Henri, when his mother cut him
short with a stamp of her foot and a cry of--

"Tais-toi! Silence! Wicked boy!--thou wilt kill me with thy naughty
speeches! All this evil comes of the school,--I would thy father had
never been compelled to send thee there!"

As she said this with a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri,
seized by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without
warning into loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled
the yelling of a tortured savage,--and Babette, petrified at first
by the appalling noise, presently gave way likewise, and shrieked a
wild accompaniment.

"What ails my children?" said a gentle voice, distinct and clear in