the
flask with thanks saying, "That's good! that warms you up and keeps the
hunger off a bit." The alcohol raised his spirits somewhat, and he
proposed that they should do the same as on the little ship in the
song--eat the fattest of the passengers. This indirect but obvious
allusion to Boule De Suif shocked the gentle people. Nobody responded
and only Cornudet smiled. The two Sisters of Mercy had ceased to tell
their beads and sat motionless, their hands buried in their wide
sleeves, their eyes obstinately lowered, doubtless engaged in offering
back to Heaven the sacrifice of suffering which it sent them.

At last, at three o'clock, when they were in the middle of an
interminable stretch of bare country without a single village in sight,
Boule de Suif, stooping hurriedly, drew from under the seat a large
basket covered with a white napkin.

Out of it she took, first of all, a little china plate and a delicate
silver drinking-cup, and then an immense dish, in which two whole fowls
ready carved lay stiffened in their jelly. Other good things were
visible in the basket: patties, fruits, pastry--in fact provisions for a
three days' journey in order to be independent of inn cookery. The necks
of four bottles protruded from between the parcels of food. She took the
wing of a fowl and began to eat it daintily with one of those little
rolls which they call "Regence" in Normandy.

Every eye was fixed upon her. As the odor of the food spread through the
carriage nostrils began to quiver and mouths to fill with water, while
the jaws, just below the ears contracted painfully. The dislike
entertained by the ladies for this abandoned young woman grew savage,
almost to the point of longing to murder her or at least to turn her out
into the snow, her and her drinking-cup and her basket and her
provisions.

Loiseau, however, was devouring the dish of chicken with his eyes.
"Madame has been more prudent than we," he said. "Some people always
think of everything."

She turned her head in his direction. "If you would care for any,
Monsieur--? It is not comfortable to fast for so long."

He bowed. "Ma foi!--frankly, I won't refuse. I can't stand this any
longer--the fortune of war, is it not, madame?" And with a comprehensive
look he added: "In moments such as this we are only too glad to find any
one who will oblige us." He had a newspaper which he spread on his knee
to save his trousers, and with the point of a knife which he al