Bastringuette left the room; and Paul closed his eyes, praying heaven to deal kindly with him, because his existence was still necessary.

Toward evening, after several hours of restless slumber, he opened his eyes; two faces were leaning over him, waiting for the moment of his awakening. Paul uttered a cry of surprise when he recognized Elina.

"Yes, it's Mamzelle Elina," said Bastringuette; "it's your sweetheart. I went and waited for her at her dressmaker's door, so's to tell her what had happened to you, and I had an idea she'd come back with me. That's why I said perhaps you'd have a pleasant waking-up."

Paul held out his hand to the little dressmaker, who gazed at him with eyes full of love and tears as she said:

"Oh, my friend! you are wounded! what a misfortune! But still I'm very happy that Bastringuette came and told me. She told me how it occurred, too. A horrid drunken man pushed you and knocked you down; she happened to be pa.s.sing and saw you lying on the ground, unconscious, and had you brought here to her room. She's a dear, good girl, and she loves you almost as much as I do. I should have been so anxious, so unhappy, when I didn't see you! I should have thought again that you had stopped loving me. But now I'll come and see you every day; yes, monsieur, every day; in the morning when I go to my work, and at night before I go home to my aunt's.--What is it, monsieur? don't you want me to?"

"If your aunt should find it out," Paul murmured, "she would scold you, and I don't want to expose you to----"

"What an extraordinary man!" cried Bastringuette; "he's willing to be loved, but he don't want anybody to do anything for him. Bless my soul!

mademoiselle will get up a little earlier and go home a little later--what a hardship! She'll tire herself, perhaps, to get here a little sooner; but she'll see you, and that'll do you good and her too."

"Oh! yes, my dear," said Elina, "let me spend every minute I am at liberty with you; let me help Bastringuette; I shall be so happy when I see you getting better every day! and the first time you go out, you will lean on her and me. Oh! you shall see how I can take care of you, too; I look like a light-headed little thing, but I won't be that any more; I mean that you shall be satisfied with me."

The young invalid felt the tears roll down his cheeks when he saw how fond they were of him; and he was so moved to find himself the object of such sweet and loving attentions, that he could not speak; but he looked from one to the other of the girls who stood beside his bed, and his eyes probably told them all that was taking place in his heart, for Bastringuette exclaimed, with her customary bluntness:

"Oh, well! if we're going to be sentimental, and all three of us cry, we shall make a pretty mess of it; it'll give him the fever, and he won't get well. The doctor said he mustn't be excited, and we've done nothing else!"

Elina sat down beside the bed, took one of the injured man's hands in hers, and said to him in a low, very low tone:

"Does it do you any harm to see how much I love you? More's the pity if it does; I'll tell you every day. And if my aunt should find out that I come to see you, why, I'll say: 'Paul is going to be my husband, aunt; and a woman has a right to nurse her husband.'"

While the little dressmaker said to her lover all that her heart prompted her to say, Bastringuette went to one of her neighbors and borrowed a wretched mattress, which she carried into her closet; then she threw some old clothes on it, and said to herself:

"I shall sleep well enough there; anyway, a nurse can't sleep much."

Elina, having to return to her aunt, left them with regret, saying:

"Until to-morrow!"

Then, after administering to her patient a draught prescribed by the doctor, Bastringuette lay down on the mattress on the floor of the closet.

"I'll be on hand if you make the least movement," she said to Paul.

Early the next morning, Elina was at the flower girl's, bringing some sugar and a small jar of preserve.

"It's my right to help take care of him," she said to Bastringuette. "My aunt gives me so much a day for my food, and I can afford to pinch myself a little for my poor Paul."

That seemed natural enough to Bastringuette, for she would have done as much.

If the certainty of being loved had been sufficient to restore the young messenger's health, Paul would have been cured in a very short time. But such was not the case; unluckily, the patient's mind was constantly occupied by other thoughts. He was worried and alarmed by his helpless plight, and the wound on his head, instead of cicatrizing, became more serious, because it was complicated by a sharp attack of fever.

The two girls redoubled their zealous attentions to the patient; Bastringuette pa.s.sed part of the night with him; Elina sometimes arrived before daybreak, and often remained very late in the evening, having succeeded in making her aunt believe that she worked late at Madame Dumanchon's. Both of them deprived themselves of the most essential necessities of life, so that the sick man need lack nothing; but neither of them complained nor would have consented to surrender the place she occupied.

One evening, after a day during which the fever had not left him for an instant, Paul looked about and saw that Bastringuette was alone in the room. She had gone into a corner, so that the invalid might not see her eat the piece of dry bread of which her evening meal consisted. Paul called her, and she hastened to his side after thrusting her bread into her pocket.

"What day is it?" he asked, fixing his eyes, bright with fever, on Bastringuette's.

"What day? This is Tuesday."

"No, not that; what day of the month?"

"Oh! it's the twenty-fourth."

"The twenty-fourth! Why, how long have I been sick?"

"It was the fifth you got so used up! I remember it very well; it was a Thursday."

"The fifth; so I've been here nineteen days?"

"Well, what if it was fifty? I can understand that it bores you to be sick, but ain't you well taken care of here? Don't Mamzelle Elina and I do all that's necessary, all the doctor says?"

"Ah! yes, my good Bastringuette--indeed you do too much! But to-morrow's the twenty-fifth. Great G.o.d! It can't be postponed. That thought, Bastringuette, is what gives me the fever and keeps me from getting well."

"What thought? Come, speak out, tell me what you want me to do. I'll do it right away."

"Oh! yes, yes! you will do it, won't you?"

"Do you want me to swear?"

"No. Listen: that old lady, at whose rooms you met me, on Vieille Rue du Temple----"

"Madame Desroches?"

"Yes; I absolutely must send her some money."

"Money! Mon Dieu! as if----"

"Oh! I am well aware that you haven't any, my poor girl! I know that you and Elina deprive yourselves of everything in order to take care of me."

"No, no--nonsense! The druggist gives me the medicines for nothing."

"Listen. To-morrow morning, early, you must go to my room--the key is in the pocket of my jacket. It's on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore, No. 10.

Go up to the fifth floor, the door on the left. There you will find sixty francs in the table drawer."

"Ah! what luck!"

"Wait a moment: you are to take that money, also a frock-coat, a pair of black trousers, and a black waistcoat, which you will find in a small wardrobe. They are all in good condition, almost new, I wear them so seldom. However, if you think they are not enough, take all the linen you can find--four shirts, some sheets----"

"Mon Dieu! what am I to do with all those things?"

"Take them to the Mont-de-Piete, and get forty francs on them, which you will put with the sixty; for to-morrow,--yes, to-morrow, the twenty-fifth,--you must carry a hundred francs to Madame Desroches. You must do it, do you hear?"

"n.o.ble young man! What! you mean to go on doing without everything, to----"

"Hush, Bastringuette! you must carry that sum to-morrow to the widow of my benefactor. If that isn't done, I feel that I shall never get well."