, caresses, the
breath from the heart with which we revive a tiny flame on the point of
dying out, consultations, doctor's visits, costly medicines, the
remedies of the wealthy,--Germinie spared nothing for the little one and
gave her everything. Her wages flowed through that channel. For almost a
year she gave her beef juice every morning: sleepyhead that she was, she
left her bed at five o'clock in the morning to prepare it, and awoke
without being called, as mothers do. The child was out of danger at
last, when Germinie received a visit one morning from her sister the
dressmaker, who had been married two or three years to a machinist, and
who came now to bid her adieu: her husband was going to accompany some
fellow-workmen who had been hired to go to Africa. She was going with
him and she proposed to Germinie that they should take the little one
with them as a playmate for their own child. They offered to take her
off her hands. Germinie, they said, would have to pay only for the
journey. It was a separation she would have to make up her mind to
sooner or later on account of her mistress. And then, said the sister,
she was the child's aunt too. And she heaped words upon words to induce
Germinie to give them the child, with whom she and her husband expected,
after their arrival in Africa, to move Germinie to pity, to get
possession of her wages, to play upon her heart and her purse.

It cost Germinie very dear to part with her niece. She had staked a
portion of her existence upon the child. She was attached to her by her
anxiety and her sacrifices. She had disputed possession of her with
disease and had won the day; the girl's life was her miracle. And yet
she realized that she could never take her to mademoiselle's apartments;
that mademoiselle, at her age, with the burden of her years, and an aged
person's need of tranquillity, could never endure the constant noise and
movement of a child. And then, the little girl's presence in the house
would cause idle gossip and set the whole street agog: people would say
she was her child. Germinie made a confidante of her mistress.
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil knew the whole story. She knew that she had
taken charge of her niece, although she had pretended not to know it;
she had chosen to see nothing in order to permit everything. She advised
Germinie to entrust her niece to her sister, pointing out to her all the
difficulties in the way of keeping her herself, and she gave her