"So! the Maison Centrale! but no matter--enter--I fear nothing, having known only misery. Moreover, I've a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I'll give you a bed and a slice of cheese." And she pulled from the eaves some bundles of dried heather and spread them as a pallet in the corner by the fire. "Do you live here alone?" demanded La Bretonne, timidly. "Yes, with my _gâchette_, going on seven years now. I earn our living by working in the wood." "Your man, then, is dead?" "Yes," said the other bruskly, "the _gâchette_ has no father. Briefly, to each his sorrow! But come, behold your straw, and two or three potatoes left from supper. It is all I can offer you--" She was called by a childish voice coming from a dark nook, separated from the room by a board partition. "Good night!" she repeated, "the little one cries; I must go, but sleep you well!" And taking up the lamp she passed into the closet, leaving La Bretonne crouched alone in the darkness. Stretched upon her heather, after she had eaten her supper, she strove to close her eyes, but sleep would not come to her. Through the thin partition she heard the mother still softly talking to the child, whom the arrival of a stranger had wakened, and who did not wish to go to sleep again. The mother soothed and fondled it with words of endearment that somehow strangely disturbed La Bretonne. That outburst of simple tenderness seemed to waken a confused maternal instinct in the soul of that girl condemned in the past for having stifled her new-born. "If things had not gone so badly with me," thought La Bretonne, sorrowfully, "_it_ would have been the same age as this little one here." At that thought and at the sound of that childish voice, a sickening shudder seemed to shake her very vitals; something soft and tender to spring up in that soured heart, and an increasing need for the relief of tears. "But come, come, my little one," the mother cried, "to sleep you must go! And if you are good and do as I say, to-morrow I'll take you to the Sainte-Catherine's Fair!" "The _fête_ of little children, mama; the _fête_ of little children, you mean?" "Yes, my angel, of little children." "And the day when the good Sainte-Catherine brings playthings to the babies, mama?" "Sometimes--yes." "Then why doesn't she bring playthings to our house, mama?" "We live too far away, perhaps; and then--we are too poor." "She brings them only to rich babies, then, mama? But why, mama, why, I say? I should love to see playthings!" "Eh, bien! some day you may, if you are very good--to-night, perhaps, if you are wise and go to sleep soon." "I will, then, mama, I will right away, so she can bring them to-morrow." The little voice ceased; there was a long silence; then a long breath, even and light! The child slept at last--the mother also.