ly covered by a ragged fichu which
was once a Madres handkerchief, showed edges of the white skin below the
exposed and sun-burned parts. One end of her petticoat was drawn between
the legs and fastened with a huge pin in front, giving that garment the
look of a pair of bathing drawers. The feet and the legs, which could be
seen through the clear water in which she stood, attracted the eye by a
delicacy which was worthy of a sculptor of the middle ages. The charming
limbs exposed to the sun had a ruddy tone that was not without beauty
of its own. The neck and bosom were worthy of being wrapped in silks and
cashmeres; and the nymph had blue eyes fringed with long lashes, whose
glance might have made a painter or a poet fall upon his knees. The
doctor, enough of an anatomist to trace the exquisite figure, recognized
the loss it would be to art if the lines of such a model were destroyed
by the hard toil of the fields.

"Where do you come from, little girl? I have never seen you before,"
said the old doctor, then sixty-two years of age. This scene took place
in the month of September, 1799.

"I belong in Vatan," she answered.

Hearing Rouget's voice, an ill-looking man, standing at some distance
in the deeper waters of the brook, raised his head. "What are you
about, Flore?" he said, "While you are talking instead of catching, the
creatures will get away."

"Why have you come here from Vatan?" continued the doctor, paying no
heed to the interruption.

"I am catching crabs for my uncle Brazier here."

"Rabouiller" is a Berrichon word which admirably describes the thing it
is intended to express; namely, the action of troubling the water of a
brook, making it boil and bubble with a branch whose end-shoots spread
out like a racket. The crabs, frightened by this operation, which they
do not understand, come hastily to the surface, and in their flurry rush
into the net the fisher has laid for them at a little distance. Flore
Brazier held her "rabouilloir" in her hand with the natural grace of
childlike innocence.

"Has your uncle got permission to hunt crabs?"

"Hey! are not we all under a Republic that is one and indivisible?"
cried the uncle from his station.

"We are under a Directory," said the doctor, "and I know of no law which
allows a man to come from Vatan and fish in the territory of Issoudun";
then he said to Flore, "Have you got a mother, little one!"

"No, monsieur; and my father is in the asylum at Bou