"Your sister, Mlle. Clara! Believe me, it is you who are deceived--it is you who have lost your senses," bawled the enraged milk-woman, in a loud, coarse voice. "Your sister! A likely story a girl out of the streets, who was the companion of the very lowest wretches in the worst part of the Cité, should be a sister of yours!" At these words the assembled labourers, who naturally enough took that part in the affair which concerned a person of their own class, and who really sympathised with the bereaved milk-woman, gave utterance to deep, threatening words, in which the name of Fleur-de-Marie was angrily mingled. The three children, hearing their mother speaking in a loud tone, and fearing they knew not what, ran to her, and, clinging to her dress, burst out into a loud fit of weeping. The sight of these poor little fatherless things, dressed also in deep mourning, increased the pity of the spectators for the unfortunate widow, while it redoubled their indignation against Fleur-de-Marie; while Clara, completely frightened by these demonstrations of approaching violence, exclaimed, in an agitated tone, to a group of farm labourers: "Take this woman off the premises directly! Do you not perceive grief has driven her out of her senses? Marie! dear Marie! never mind what she says. She is mad, poor creature, and knows not what she does!" The poor Goualeuse, pale, exhausted, and almost fainting, made no effort to escape from the powerful grasp of the incensed milk-woman; she hung her head, as though unable or unwilling to meet the gaze of friend or foe. Clara, attributing her condition to the terror excited by so alarming a scene, renewed her commands to the labourers, "Did you not hear me desire that this mad woman might be instantly taken away from the farm? However, unless she immediately ceases her rude and insolent language, I can promise her, by way of punishment, she shall neither have the situation my mother promised her nor ever be suffered to put her foot on the premises again." Not a person stirred to obey Clara's orders; on the contrary, one of the boldest among the party exclaimed: "Well, but, Miss Clara, if your friend there is only a common girl out of the streets, and, as such, acquainted with the murderer of this poor woman's husband, surely she ought to go before the mayor to give an account of herself and her bad companions!" "I tell you," repeated Clara, with indignant warmth, and addressing the milk-woman, "you shall never enter this farm again unless you this very instant, and before all these people, humbly beg pardon of Mlle. Marie for all the wicked things you have been saying about her!"