into a tranquil sleep, but who she would hardly have dared to
leave. The pastor, though hardships, battles, and persecutions had
left him childless, had been the father of a large family; and
perhaps he was drawn the more strongly towards the mother and
child, because he almost felt as if, in fulfilling the part of a
father towards the widow of Berenger de Ribaumont, he was taking
her in the stead of the widow of his own Theodore.

Had the little Baronne de Ribaumont been lodged in a tapes-tried
chamber, between curtains of velvet and gold, with a _beauffet_ by
her side glistening with gold and silver plate, as would have
befitted her station, instead of lying on a bed of straw, with no
hangings to the walls save cobwebs and hay, and wallflowers, no
_beauffet_ but the old rickety table, no attendants but Nanon and
M. Gardon, no visitors but the two white owls, no provisions save
the homely fare that rustic mothers lived upon--neither she nor her
babe could have thriven better, and probably not half so well. She
had been used to a hardy, out-of-door life, like the peasant women;
and she was young and strong, so that she recovered as they did.
If the April shower beat in at the window, or the hole in the roof,
they made a screen of canvas, covered her with cloaks, and heaped
them with hay, and she took no harm; and the pure open air that
blew in was soft with all the southern sweetness of early spring-
tide, and the little one throve in it like the puff-ball owlets in
the hayloft, or the little ring-doves in the ivy, whose parent's
cooing voice was Eustacie's favourite music. Almost as good as
these her fellow-nestlings was the little Moonbeam, _la petite
Rayonette_, as Eustacie fondly called this light that had come back
to her from the sunshine she had lost. Had she cried or been heard,
the sounds would probably have passed for the wailings of the