The Country Doctor | Page 8

simply have to wear your life out before you would make ten
sous a day."
"Then you have some land of your own?" asked the commandant.
"No, sir. I had some land once when my husband was alive; since he
died I have done so badly that I had to sell it"
"Why, how do you reach the year's end without debts?" Genestas went
on, "when you bring up children for a livelihood and wash and feed
them on two sous a day?"

"Well, we never go to St. Sylvester's Day without debt, sir," she went
on without ceasing to comb the child's hair. "But so it is--Providence
helps us out. I have a couple of cows. Then my daughter and I do some
gleaning at harvest-time, and in winter we pick up firewood. Then at
night we spin. Ah! we never want to see another winter like this last
one, that is certain! I owe the miller seventy-five francs for flour.
Luckily he is M. Benassis' miller. M. Benassis, ah! he is a friend to
poor people. He has never asked for his due from anybody, and he will
not begin with us. Besides, our cow has a calf, and that will set us a bit
straighter."
The four orphans for whom the old woman's affection represented all
human guardianship had come to an end of their prunes. As their
foster-mother's attention was taken up by the officer with whom she
was chatting, they seized the opportunity, and banded themselves
together in a compact file, so as to make yet another assault upon the
latch of the door that stood between them and the tempting heap of
dried plums. They advanced to the attack, not like French soldiers, but
as stealthily as Germans, impelled by frank animal greediness.
"Oh! you little rogues! Do you want to finish them up?"
The old woman rose, caught the strongest of the four, administered a
gentle slap on the back, and flung him out of the house. Not a tear did
he shed, but the others remained breathless with astonishment.
"They give you a lot of trouble----"
"Oh! no, sir, but they can smell the prunes, the little dears. If I were to
leave them alone here for a moment, they would stuff themselves with
them."
"You are very fond of them?"
The old woman raised her head at this, and looked at him with gentle
malice in her eyes.
"Fond of them!" she said. "I have had to part with three of them already.

I only have the care of them until they are six years old," she went on
with a sigh.
"But where are your own children?"
"I have lost them."
"How old are you?" Genestas asked, to efface the impression left by his
last question.
"I am thirty-eight years old, sir. It will be two years come next St.
John's Day since my husband died."
She finished dressing the poor sickly mite, who seemed to thank her by
a loving look in his faded eyes.
"What a life of toil and self-denial!" thought the cavalry officer.
Beneath a roof worthy of the stable wherein Jesus Christ was born, the
hardest duties of motherhood were fulfilled cheerfully and without
consciousness of merit. What hearts were these that lay so deeply
buried in neglect and obscurity! What wealth, and what poverty!
Soldiers, better than other men, can appreciate the element of grandeur
to be found in heroism in sabots, in the Evangel clad in rags. The Book
may be found elsewhere, adorned, embellished, tricked out in silk and
satin and brocade, but here, of a surety, dwelt the spirit of the Book. It
was impossible to doubt that Heaven had some holy purpose
underlying it all, at the sight of the woman who had taken a mother's lot
upon herself, as Jesus Christ had taken the form of a man, who gleaned
and suffered and ran into debt for her little waifs; a woman who
defrauded herself in her reckonings, and would not own that she was
ruining herself that she might be a Mother. One was constrained to
admit, at the sight of her, that the good upon earth have something in
common with the angels in heaven; Commandant Genestas shook his
head as he looked at her.
"Is M. Benassis a clever doctor?" he asked at last.

"I do not know, sir, but he cures poor people for nothing."
"It seems to me that this is a man and no mistake!" he went on,
speaking to himself.
"Oh! yes, sir, and a good man too! There is scarcely any one hereabouts
that does not put his name in their prayers, morning and night!"
"That is for you, mother," said the soldier, as he gave her several coins,
"and that is for the