Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/382

 veritable countess, pour sûr, and of a great family. La vieille bonne maman had been a nourrice in her Paris house.  ' On y mangeait de bons morceaux, je vous en réponds, '  said Madame Jeannin. But how they could have gone on caring for her she did not know, since all money from Paris ceased at last to come, and well did she remember the day when Mademoiselle came to their cottage and took the poor old lady to live with her—Ah, that was a devotion! When Mademoiselle was not with her, Madame la comtesse pined. She had died of grief, and it had broken one's heart to hear her moaning day and night: 'Marthe;—Marthe;—Marthe.' Only when Madame Graham sat beside her and held her hand would she be still, and in her last moments she had cried out upon Marthe Ludérac's name, as if upon a saint's, and had begged for her intercession with le bon Dieu.

There were many, also, who remembered the child leading her mother in the woods and one or two who said that they had witnessed the scene of the stoning. She had thrown herself before her mother and had looked like a martyr; with great courageous eyes and blood upon her forehead. The story of the young permissionnaire was told; Marthe had become a heroine of the great war; and people passing the Manoir at night had heard the angelic notes of her harp and now recalled the supernatural awe that had fallen upon them. One woman said that she had seen Marthe Ludérac in the forest at evening carrying a succoured animal, and that there had been an aura about her