"
"How dost thou prove a waif of the streets a holy thing?" enquired
Pierre curiously.
Patoux shrugged his shoulders, and gave a wide deprecatory wave of
both hands.
"Ah, that is more than I can tell you!" he said,--"It is a matter
beyond my skill. But the boy was a fair-faced boy,--I never saw him
myself--"
Midon laughed outright.
"Never saw him thyself!" he cried,--"And yet thou dost make the sign
of the cross at the thought of him! Diantre! Patoux, thou art
crazy!"
"Maybe--maybe," said Patoux mildly,--they were walking together out
of the cemetery by this time in the wake of the rapidly dispersing
crowd,--"But I have always taken my wife's word,--and I take it now.
And she has said over and over again to me that the boy had a rare
sweet nature. And then--the child whom the Cardinal healed,--Fabien
Doucet,--will always insist upon it that it was the touch of that
same boy which truly cured him and not the Cardinal at all!"
"Mere fancy!" said Pierre carelessly,--"And truly if it were not for
knowing thee to be honest, I should doubt the miracle altogether!"
"And thou wouldst be of the majority!" said Patoux equably--"For our
house has been a very bee-hive of buzz and trouble ever since a bit
of good was done in it--and Martine Doucet, the mother of the cured
child, has led the life of the damned, thanks to the kindness of her
neighbours and friends! And will you believe me, the Archbishop of
Rouen himself took the trouble to walk into the market-place and
assure her she was a wicked woman,--that she had taught her boy to
play the cripple in order to excite pity,--and I believe he thinks
she is concerned in the strange disappearance of his clerk, Claude
Cazeau.
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