'Let us hope you are right— it is naturally more
serious for you than for me. I do not myself make
tables and chairs, I sell buttons and tapes to gain my
living. And then, I have only one son to think of,
and he is already provided for, thanks to the Church
and Madame de Berac. Ah, yes, it is more grave for
you than for me. But no doubt the good saints will
hold you in mind, remembering that you have a wife
and two children, and the one child so ailing that he
costs a small fortune what with his diet and his
doctor's bills . . . ai, ai, . . .' After which en-
couraging words she got up, kissed Marie, and took
her departure.
When she had gone Jouse slapped his big knee and
guffawed: 'Oh, that sister of mine, she is comic!
She comes here full of hope that we shall all weep.
What a woman, the breath of her nostrils is affliction.
She is one of those who carry a ready-made cap to
fit fears: "Put it on/5 she says. But I answer: "Your
neat little cap does not fit me!" "It is graver for you
than for me/5 she says, "you have a wife and two
children to provide for; but no doubt the good saints
will hold you in mind, remembering that one child
is always ailing.59 Ah, mais non, she would pick the
eyes out of a corpse; a positive vulture she is, my
sister! Well, now, I say this: let Anatole Kahn, or
whatever his name is, go to the devil. I am Jouse
Benedit, born and bred in Saint Loup as my father
was born and bred here before me, as his father was
born and bred here before him; and always we have
lived by the honesty of wood, by the honesty and skill
of our brains and our fingers. Birth and death, death
and birth our good beds have sustained, to say
nothing of fine, sturdy Christian mating. There are
beds in Saint Loup that my grandfather made, as sound
this night as the day when he made them. Does that
count for nothing? Sant Jan Tami de Dieu, it counts
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