attention. I, of course,
had not stayed in bed. I was the nurse, carrying out Vitalis'
instructions.

Poor little Pretty-Heart! he liked me to nurse him. He looked at me and
smiled sadly. His look was quite human. He, who was usually so quick and
petulant, always playing tricks on one of us, was now quiet and
obedient.

In the days that followed he tried to show us how friendly he felt
towards us, even to Capi, who had so often been the victim of his
tricks. As in the usual trend of inflammation of the lungs, he soon
began to cough; the attacks tired him greatly, for his little body shook
convulsively. All the money which I had, five sous, I spent on sugar
sticks for him, but they made him worse instead of better. With his keen
instinct, he soon noticed that every time he coughed I gave him a little
piece of sugar stick. He took advantage of this and coughed every
moment in order to get the remedy that he liked so much, and this remedy
instead of curing him made him worse.

When I found out this trick I naturally stopped giving him the candy,
but he was not discouraged. First he begged for it with an appealing
look; then when he saw that I would not give it to him, he sat up in his
seat and bent his little body with his hand on his stomach, and coughed
with all his might. The veins in his forehead stood out, the tears ran
from his eyes, and his pretense at choking, in the end, turned to a
dreadful attack over which he had no control.

I had to stay at the inn with Pretty-Heart while my master went out
alone. One morning upon his return he told me that the landlady had
demanded the sum that we owed her. This was the first time that he had
ever spoken to me about money. It was quite by chance that I had learned
that he had sold his watch to buy my sheepskin. Now he told me that he
had only fifty sous left. The only thing to do, he said, was to give a
performance that same day. A performance without Zerbino, Dulcie or
Pretty-Heart; why, that seemed to me impossible!

"We must get forty francs at once," he said. "Pretty-Heart must be
looked after. We must have a fire in the room, and medicine, and the
landlady must be paid. If we pay her what we owe her, she will give us
another credit."

Forty francs in this village! in the cold, and with such poor resources
at our command!

While I stayed at home with Pretty-Heart, Vitalis found a hall in the
public market, for an out-of-door performance was out of the question.