They would have yielded had they consulted the dictates of their heart alone; but they began to fear for themselves the responsibility of their indulgence; the people will demand from them their king, the nation its chief.

Egotism hardened their hearts; the wife of M.Sausse, with whom her husband repeatedly exchanged glances, and in whose breast the queen hoped to find pity and compassion, was the least moved of any.

Whilst the king harangued the municipal authorities, the queen, seated with her children on her lap between two bales of goods in the shop, showed her infants to Madame Sausse.

"You are a mother, madame," said the queen; "you are a wife; the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands--think what I must suffer for these children, for my husband.

At one word from you I shall owe them to you; the queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom, more than life." "Madame," returned the grocer's wife unmoved, with that petty common sense of minds in which calculation stifles generosity, "I wish it was in my power to serve you; you are thinking of the king; I am thinking of M.Sausse.It is a wife's duty to think of her husband." All hope is lost when no pity can be found in a woman's heart.