It was the first time that this had ever happened, for Madame
Aubain was not of an expansive nature. Felicite was as grateful
for it as if it had been some favour, and thenceforth loved her
with animal-like devotion and a religious veneration.
Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard the drums of a
marching regiment passing through the street, she would stand in
the doorway with a jug of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She
nursed cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees, and one of
them even declared that he wished to marry her. But they
quarrelled, for one morning when she returned from the Angelus she
found him in the kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had
prepared for himself during her absence.
After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man who was
credited with having committed frightful misdeeds in '93. He lived
near the river in the ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at
him through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that fell on
his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with catarrh, with long
hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour as big as his head on one
arm.
She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and dreamed of
installing him in the bake-house without his being in Madame's
way.
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