pretty to you,
because you come upon them up here on a hillside in a forlorn part of
the world where you did not expect to find things clean and tidy. The
reason of the prettiness is a kind of harmony between the little house
and its surroundings. Nature has set picturesque groups of trees and
running streams about it, and has scattered her fairest flowers among
the grass, her sweet-scented wild strawberry blossoms, and her lovely
violets.... Well, what is the matter?" asked Benassis, as La Fosseuse
came back to them.

"Oh! nothing, nothing," she answered. "I fancied that one of my chickens
was missing, and had not been shut up."

Her remark was disingenuous, but this was only noticed by the doctor,
who said in her ear, "You have been crying!"

"Why do you say things like that to me before some one else?" she asked
in reply.

"Mademoiselle," said Genestas, "it is a great pity that you live here
all by yourself; you ought to have a mate in such a charming cage as
this."

"That is true," she said, "but what would you have? I am poor, and I
am hard to please. I feel that it would not suit me at all to carry the
soup out into the fields, nor to push a hand-cart; to feel the misery
of those whom I should love, and have no power to put an end to it; to
carry my children in my arms all day, and patch and re-patch a man's
rags. The cure tells me that such thoughts as these are not very
Christian; I know that myself, but how can I help it? There are days
when I would rather eat a morsel of dry bread than cook anything for
my dinner. Why would you have me worry some man's life out with my
failings? He would perhaps work himself to death to satisfy my whims,
and that would not be right. Pshaw! an unlucky lot has fallen to me, and
I ought to bear it by myself."

"And besides, she is a born do-nothing," said Benassis. "We must take
my poor Fosseuse as we find her. But all that she has been saying to you
simply means that she has never loved as yet," he added, smiling. Then
he rose and went out on to the lawn for a moment.

"You must be very fond of M. Benassis?" asked Genestas.

"Oh! yes, sir; and there are plenty of people hereabouts who feel as I
do--that they would be glad to do anything in the world for him. And yet
he who cures other people has some trouble of his own that nothing can
cure. You are his friend, perhaps you know what it is? Who could have
given pain to such a man, who is the very image of God on earth?