"Can I help the people at the hospital having refused to receive my mother, because she was not raving mad?" asked Madeleine, in a low, peevish, and complaining voice. "What can I do to alter it? What is the use of your grumbling to me about my mother? and, if you fret ever so much about what neither you nor I can alter, what good will that do?"
"None at all," rejoined the artisan, hastily brushing the large bitter drops despair had driven to his eyes; "none whatever,—you are right; but when everythinggoes against you, it is difficult to know what to do or say."
"Gracious Father!" cried Madeleine; "what an agony of thirst I am enduring! My lips are parched with the fever which is consuming me, and yet I shiver as though death were on me!"
"Wait one instant, and I will give you some drin
