She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, “Black bread.”

“Come,” said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, “here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours.”

She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied, “A sack.”

“But,” resumed the good Oudarde, “you must have perceived to some extent, that yesterday was a festival.”

“I do perceive it,” said the recluse; “‘tis two days now since I have had any water in my crock.”

She added, after a silence, “‘Tis a festival, I am forgotten.