e on a large paving stone, which she held between her knees.
This work was their only means of living, the son having been obliged to
give up all labor. She smiled, however, to-day on seeing the doctor, for
Valentin had just eaten a cutlet with a good appetite, a thing which
he had not done for months. Valentin, a sickly-looking young man, with
scanty hair and beard and prominent cheek bones, on each of which was
a bright red spot, while the rest of his face was of a waxen hue,
rose quickly to show how much more sprightly he felt! And Clotilde
was touched by the reception given to Pascal as a saviour, the awaited
Messiah. These poor people pressed his hands--they would like to have
kissed his feet; looking at him with eyes shining with gratitude. True,
the disease was not yet cured: perhaps this was only the effect of the
stimulus, perhaps what he felt was only the excitement of fever. But
was it not something to gain time? He gave him another injection while
Clotilde, standing before the window, turned her back to them; and when
they were leaving she saw him lay twenty francs upon the table. This
often happened to him, to pay his patients instead of being paid by
them.

He made three other visits in the old quarter, and then went to see a
lady in the new town. When they found themselves in the street again, he
said:

"Do you know that, if you were a courageous girl, we should walk to
Seguiranne, to see Sophie at her aunt's. That would give me pleasure."

The distance was scarcely three kilometers; that would be only a
pleasant walk in this delightful weather. And she agreed gaily, not
sulky now, but pressing close to him, happy to hang on his arm. It was
five o'clock. The setting sun spread over the fields a great sheet of
gold. But as soon as they left Plassans they were obliged to cross
the corner of the vast, arid plain, which extended to the right of the
Viorne. The new canal, whose irrigating waters were soon to transform
the face of the country parched with thirst, did not yet water this
quarter, and red fields and yellow fields stretched away into the
distance under the melancholy and blighting glare of the sun, planted
only with puny almond trees and dwarf olives, constantly cut down and
pruned, whose branches twisted and writhed in attitudes of suffering
and revolt. In the distance, on the bare hillsides, were to be seen only
like pale patches the country houses, flanked by the regulation cypress.
The vast,