Kabanata Kabanata 10 · 第10章

The next few days were very sad, as they always must be directly after a

death. The absence of the familiar face from its accustomed place makes

the house seem empty, and each time the eye falls on anything the dear,

dead one has had in constant use, a fresh pang of sorrow darts through

the heart. There is the empty chair, the umbrella still standing in the

hall, the glass which the maid has not yet washed. In every room there

is something lying just as it was left for the last time; the scissors,

an odd glove, the fingered book, the numberless other objects, which,

insignificant in themselves, become a source of sharp pain because they

recall so vividly the loved one who has passed away. And the voice rings

in one's ears till it seems almost a reality, but there is no escape

from the house haunted by this presence, for others are suffering also,

and all must stay and suffer with each other.

In addition to her natural grief, Jeanne had to bear the pain of her

discovery. She was always thinking of it, and the terrible secret

increased her former sense of desolation tenfold, for now she felt that

she could never put her trust or confidence in anyone again.

The baron soon went away, thinking to find relief from the grief which

was deadening all his faculties in change of air and change of scene,

and the household at Les Peuples resumed its quiet regular life again.

Then Paul fell ill, and Jeanne passed twelve days in an agony of fear,

unable to sleep and scarcely touching food. The boy got well, but there

remained the thought that he might die. What should she do if he did?

What would become of her? Gradually there came a vague longing for

another child, and soon she could think of nothing else; she had always

fancied she should like two children, a boy and a girl, and the idea of

having a daughter haunted her. But since Rosalie had been sent away, she

had lived quite apart from her husband, and at the present moment it

seemed utterly impossible to renew their former relations. Julien's

affections were centered elsewhere; she knew that; and, on her side, the

mere thought of having to submit to his caresses again, made her shudder

with disgust.

Still, she would have overcome her repugnance (so tormented was she by

the desire of another child) if she could have seen any way to bring

about the intimacy she desired; but she would have died rather than let

her husband guess what was in her thoughts, and he never seemed to dream

of approaching her now. Perhaps she would have given up the idea had not

each night the vision of a daughter playing with Paul under the plane

tree appeared to her. Sometimes she felt she _must_ get up and join her

husband in his room; twice, in fact, she did glide to his door, but each

time she came back, without having turned the handle, her face burning

with shame.

The baron was away, her mother was dead, and she had no one to whom she

could confide this delicate secret. She made up her mind, at last, to

tell the Abbe Picot her difficulty, under the seal of confession. She

went to him one day and found him in his little garden, reading his

breviary among the fruit trees. She talked to him for a few minutes

about one thing and another, then, "Monsieur l'abbe, I want to confess,"

she said, with a deep blush.

He put on his spectacles to look at her better, for the request

astonished him. "I don't think you can have any very heavy sins on your

conscience," he said, with a smile.

"No, but I want to ask your advice on a subject so--so painful to enter

upon, that I dare not talk about it in an ordinary way," she replied,

feeling very confused.

He put on his priestly air immediately.

"Very well, my daughter, come to the confessional, and I will hear you

there."

But she suddenly felt a scruple at talking of such things in the

quietness of an empty church.

"No, Monsieur le cure--after all--if you will let me--I can tell you

here what I want to say. See, we will go and sit in your little arbor

over there."

As they walked slowly over to the arbor she tried to find the words in

which she could best begin her confidence. They sat down, and she

commenced, as if she were confessing, "My father," then hesitated, said

again, "My father," then stopped altogether, too ashamed to continue.

The priest crossed his hands over his stomach and waited for her to go

on. "Well, my daughter," he said, perceiving her embarrassment, "you

seem afraid to say what it is; come now, be brave."

"My father, I want to have another child," she said abruptly, like a

coward throwing himself headlong into the danger he dreads.

The priest, hardly understanding what she meant, made no answer, and she

tried to explain herself, but, in her confusion, her words became more

and more difficult to understand.

"I am quite alone in life now; my father and my husband do not agree; my

mother is dead, and--and--the other day I almost lost my son," she

whispered with a shudder. "What would have become of me if he had died?"

The priest looked at her in bewilderment. "There, there; come to the

point," he said.

"I want to have another child," she repeated.

The abbe was used to the coarse pleasantries of the peasants, who did

not mind what they said before him, and he answered, with a sly smile

and a knowing shake of the head: "Well, I don't think there need be much

difficulty about that."

She raised her clear eyes to his and said, hesitatingly:

"But--but--don't you understand that since--since that trouble

with--the--maid--my husband and I live--quite apart."

These words came as a revelation to the priest, accustomed as he was to

the promiscuity and easy morals of the peasants. Then he thought he

could guess what the young wife really wanted, and he looked at her out

of the corner of his eye, pitying her, and sympathizing with her

distress.

"Yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean. I can quite understand that you

should find your--your widowhood hard to bear. You are young, healthy,

and it is only natural; very natural." He began to smile, his lively

nature getting the better of him. "Besides, the Church allows these

feelings, sometimes," he went on, gently tapping Jeanne's hands. "What

are we told? That carnal desires may be satisfied lawfully in wedlock

only. Well, you are married, are you not?"

She, in her turn, had not at first understood what his words implied,

but when his meaning dawned on her, her face became crimson, and her

eyes filled with tears.

"Oh! Monsieur le cure, what do you mean? What do you think? I assure

you--I assure--" and she could not continue for her sobs.

Her emotion surprised the abbe, and he tried to console her.

"There, there," he said; "I did not mean to pain you. I was only joking,

and there's no harm in a joke between honest people. But leave it all in

my hands, and I will speak to M. Julien."

She did not know what to say. She wished, now, that she could refuse his

help, for she feared his want of tact would only increase her

difficulties, but she did not dare say anything.

"Thank you, Monsieur le cure," she stammered; and then hurried away.

The next week was passed by Jeanne in an agony of doubts and fears. Then

one evening, Julien watched her all through dinner with an amused smile

on his lips, and evinced towards her a gallantry which was faintly

tinged with irony. After dinner they walked up and down the baroness's

avenue, and he whispered in her ear:

"Then we are going to be friends again?"

She made no answer, and kept her eyes fixed on the ground, where there

was a straight line, hardly so thickly covered with grass as the rest of

the path. It was the line traced by the baroness's foot, which was

gradually being effaced, just as her memory was fading, and, as she

looked at it, Jeanne's heart felt bursting with grief; she seemed so

lonely, so separated from everybody.

"For my part, I am only too pleased," continued Julien. "I should have

proposed it before, but I was afraid of displeasing you."

The sun was setting; it was a mild, soft evening, and Jeanne longed to

rest her head on some loving heart, and there sob out her sorrows. She

threw herself into Julien's arms, her breast heaving, and the tears

streaming from her eyes. He looked at her in surprise, thinking this

outburst was occasioned by the love she still felt for him, and, unable

to see her face, he dropped a condescending kiss upon her hair. Then

they went indoors in silence and he followed her to her room.

To him this renewal of their former relations was a duty, though hardly

an unpleasant one, while she submitted to his embraces as a disgusting,

painful necessity, and resolved to put an end to them for ever, as soon

as her object was accomplished. Soon, however, she found that her

husband's caresses were not like they used to be; they may have been

more refined, they certainly were not so complete. He treated her like a

careful lover, instead of being an easy husband.

"Why do you not give yourself up to me as you used to do?" she whispered

one night, her lips close to his.

"To keep you out of the family way, of course," he answered, with a

chuckle.

She started.

"Don't you wish for any more children, then?" she asked.

His amazement was so great, that, for a moment, he was silent; then:

"Eh? What do you say?" he exclaimed. "Are you in your right senses?

Another child? I should think not, indeed! We've already got one too

many, squalling and costing money, and bothering everybody. Another

child! No, thank you!"

She clasped him in her arms, pressed her lips to his and murmured:

"Oh! I entreat you, make me a mother once more."

"Don't be so foolish," he replied, angrily. "Pray don't let me hear any

more of this nonsense."

She said no more, but she resolved to trick him into giving her the

happiness she desired. She tried to prolong her kisses, and threw her

arms passionately around him, pressing him to her, and pretending a

delirium of love she was very far from feeling. She tried every means to

make him lose control over himself, but she never once succeeded.

Tormented more and more by her desire, driven to extremities, and ready

to do or dare anything to gain her ends, she went again to the Abbe

Picot. She found him just finishing lunch, with his face crimson from

indigestion. He looked up as she came in, and, anxious to hear the

result of his mediation:

"Well?" he exclaimed.

"My husband does not want any more children," she answered at once

without any of the hesitation or shame-faced timidity she had shown

before.

The abbe got very interested, and turned towards her, ready to hear once

more of those secrets of wedded life, the revelation of which made the

task of confessing so pleasant to him.

"How is that?" he asked.

In spite of her determination to tell him all, Jeanne hardly knew how to

explain herself.

"He--he refuses--to make me a mother."

The priest understood at once; it was not the first time he had heard

of such things, but he asked for all the details, and enjoyed them as a

hungry man would a feast. When he had heard all, he reflected for a few

moments, then said in the calm, matter-of-fact tone he might have used

if he had been speaking of the best way to insure a good harvest.

"My dear child, the only thing you can do is to make your husband

believe you are pregnant; then he will cease his precautions, and you

will become so in reality."

Jeanne blushed to the roots of her hair, but, determined to be ready for

every emergency, she argued:

"But--but suppose he should not believe me?"

The cure knew too well the ins and outs of human nature not to have an

answer for that.

"Tell everybody you are _enceinte_. When he sees that everyone else

believes it, he will soon believe it himself. You will be doing no

wrong," he added, to quiet his conscience for advising this deception;

"the Church does not permit any connection between man and woman, except

for the purpose of procreation."

Jeanne followed the priest's artful device, and, a fortnight later, told

Julien she thought she was _enceinte_. He started up.

"It isn't possible! You can't be!"

She gave him her reasons for thinking so.

"Bah!" he answered. "You wait a little while."

Every morning he asked, "Well?" but she always replied: "No, not yet; I

am very much mistaken if I am not _enceinte_."

He also began to think so, and his surprise was only equaled by his

annoyance.

"Well, I can't understand it," was all he could say. "I'll be hanged if

I know how it can have happened."

At the end of a month she began to tell people the news, but she said

nothing about it to the Comtesse Gilberte, for she felt an old feeling

of delicacy in mentioning it to her. At the very first suspicion of his

wife's pregnancy, Julien had ceased to touch her, then, angrily

thinking, "Well, at any rate, this brat wasn't wanted," he made up his

mind to make the best of it, and recommenced his visits to his wife's

room. Everything happened as the priest had predicted, and Jeanne found

she would a second time become a mother. Then, in a transport of joy,

she took a vow of eternal chastity as a token of her rapturous gratitude

to the distant divinity she adored, and thenceforth closed her door to

her husband.

She again felt almost happy. She could hardly believe that it was barely

two months since her mother had died, and that only such a short time

before she had thought herself inconsolable. Now her wounded heart was

nearly healed, and her grief had disappeared, while in its place was

merely a vague melancholy, like the shadow of a great sorrow resting

over her life. It seemed impossible that any other catastrophe could

happen now; her children would grow up and surround her old age with

their affection, and her husband could go his way while she went hers.

Towards the end of September the Abbe Picot came to the chateau, in a

new cassock which had only one week's stains upon it, to introduce his

successor, the Abbe Tolbiac. The latter was small, thin, and very young,

with hollow, black-encircled eyes which betokened the depth and violence

of his feelings, and a decisive way of speaking as if there could be no

appeal from his opinion. The Abbe Picot had been appointed _doyen_ of

Goderville. Jeanne felt very sad at the thought of his departure; he was

connected, in her thoughts, with all the chief events of her life, for

he had married her, christened Paul, and buried the baroness. She liked

him because he was always good-tempered and unaffected, and she could

not imagine Etouvent without the Abbe Picot's fat figure trotting past

the farms. He himself did not seem very rejoiced at his advancement.

"I have been here eighteen years, Madame la Comtesse," he said, "and it

grieves me to go to another place. Oh! this living is not worth much, I

know, and as for the people--well, the men have no more religion than

they ought to have, the women are not so moral as they might be, and the

girls never dream of being married until it is too late for them to wear

a wreath of orange blossoms; still, I love the place."

The new cure had been fidgeting impatiently during this speech, and his

face had turned very red.

"I shall soon have all that changed," he said, abruptly, as soon as the

other priest had finished speaking; and he looked like an angry child in

his worn but spotless cassock, so thin and small was he.

The Abbe Picot looked at him sideways, as he always did when anything

amused him.

"Listen, l'abbe," he said. "You will have to chain up your parishioners

if you want to prevent that sort of thing; and I don't believe even that

would be any good."

"We shall see," answered the little priest in a cutting tone.

The old cure smiled and slowly took a pinch of snuff.

"Age and experience will alter your views, l'abbe; if they don't you

will only estrange the few good Churchmen you have. When I see a girl

come to mass with a waist bigger than it ought to be, I say to

myself--'Well, she is going to give me another soul to look after;'--and

I try to marry her. You can't prevent them going wrong, but you can find

out the father of the child and prevent him forsaking the mother. Marry

them, l'abbe, marry them, and don't trouble yourself about anything

else."

"We will not argue on this point, for we should never agree," answered

the new cure, a little roughly; and the Abbe Picot again began to

express his regret at leaving the village, and the sea which he could

see from the vicarage windows, and the little funnel-shaped valleys,

where he went to read his breviary and where he could see the boats in

the distance. Then the two priests rose to go, and the Abbe Picot kissed

Jeanne, who nearly cried when she said good-bye.

A week afterwards, the Abbe Tolbiac called again. He spoke of the

reforms he was bringing about as if he were a prince taking possession

of his kingdom. He begged the vicomtesse to communicate on all the days

appointed by the Church, and to attend mass regularly on Sundays.

"You and I are at the head of the parish," he said, "and we ought to

rule it, and always set it a good example; but, if we wish to have any

influence, we must be united. If the Church and the chateau support each

other, the cottage will fear and obey us."

Jeanne's religion was simply a matter of sentiment; she had merely the

dreamy faith that a woman never quite loses, and if she performed any

religious duties at all it was only because she had been so used to

them at the convent, for the baron's carping philosophy had long ago

overthrown all her convictions. The Abbe Picot had always been contented

with the little she did do, and never chid her for not confessing or

attending mass oftener; but when the Abbe Tolbiac did not see her at

church on the Sunday, he hastened to the chateau to question and

reprimand her. She did not wish to quarrel with the cure, so she

promised to be more attentive to the services, inwardly resolving to go

regularly only for a few weeks, out of good nature.

Little by little, however, she fell into the habit of frequenting the

church, and, in a short time, she was entirely under the influence of

the delicate-looking, strong-willed priest. His zeal and enthusiasm

appealed to her love of everything pertaining to mysticism, and he

seemed to make the chord of religious poetry, which she possessed in

common with every woman, vibrate within her. His austerity, his contempt

for every luxury and sensuality, his disdain for the things that usually

occupy the thoughts of men, his love of God, his youthful, intolerant

inexperience, his scathing words, his inflexible will made Jeanne

compare him, in her mind, to the early martyrs; and she, who had already

suffered so much, whose eyes had been so rudely opened to the deceptions

of life, let herself be completely ruled by the rigid fanaticism of this

boy who was the minister of Heaven. He led her to the feet of Christ the

Consoler, teaching her how the holy joys of religion could alleviate all

her sorrows, and, as she knelt in the confessional she humbled herself

and felt little and weak before this priest, who looked about fifteen

years old.

Soon he was detested by the whole country-side. With no pity for his

own weaknesses, he showed a violent intolerance for those of others. The

thing above all others that roused his anger and indignation was--love.

He denounced it from the pulpit in crude, ecclesiastical terms,

thundering out terrible judgments against concupiscence over the heads

of his rustic audience; and, as the pictures he portrayed in his fury

persistently haunted his mind, he trembled with rage and stamped his

foot in anger. The grown-up girls and the young fellows cast side-long

glances at each other across the aisle; and the old peasants, who liked

to joke about such matters, expressed their disapproval of the little

cure's intolerance as they walked back to their farms after service with

their wives and sons.

The whole country was in an uproar. The priest's severity and the harsh

penances he inflicted at confession were rumored about, and, as he

obstinately refused to grant absolution to the girls whose chastity was

not immaculate, smiles accompanied the whispers. When, at the holy

festivals, several of the youths and girls stayed in their seats instead

of going to communicate with the others, most of the congregation

laughed outright as they looked at them. He began to watch for lovers

like a keeper on the look-out for poachers, and on moonlight nights he

hunted up the couples along the ditches, behind the barns and among the

long grass on the hill-sides. One night he came upon two who did not

cease their love-making even before him; they were strolling along a

ditch filled with stones, with their arms round one another, kissing

each other as they walked.

"Will you stop that, you vagabonds?" cried the abbe.

"You mind yer own bus'ness, M'sieu l'cure," replied the lad, turning

round. "This ain't nothin' to do with you."

The abbe picked up some stones and threw them at the couple as he might

have done at stray dogs, and they both ran off, laughing. The next

Sunday the priest mentioned them by name before the whole congregation.

All the young fellows soon ceased to attend mass.

The cure dined at the chateau every Thursday, but he very often went

there on other days to talk to his _penitente_. Jeanne became as ardent

and as enthusiastic as he as she discussed the mysteries of a future

existence, and grew familiar with all the old and complicated arguments

employed in religious controversy. They would both walk along the

baroness's avenue talking of Christ and the Apostles, of the Virgin Mary

and of the Fathers of the Church as if they had really known them.

Sometimes they stopped their walk to ask each other profound questions,

and then Jeanne would wander off into sentimental arguments, and the

cure would reason like a lawyer possessed with the mania of proving the

possibility of squaring the circle.

Julien treated the new cure with great respect. "That's the sort of a

priest I like," he was continually saying. "Half-measures don't do for

him," and he zealously set a good example by frequently confessing and

communicating. Hardly a day passed now without the vicomte going to the

Fourvilles, either to shoot with the comte, who could not do without

him, or to ride with the comtesse regardless of rain and bad weather.

"They are riding-mad," remarked the comte; "but the exercise does my

wife good."

The baron returned to Les Peuples about the middle of November. He

seemed a different man, he had aged so much and was so low-spirited; he

was fonder than ever of his daughter, as if the last few months of

melancholy solitude had caused in him an imperative need of affection

and tenderness. Jeanne told him nothing about her new ideas, her

intimacy with the Abbe Tolbiac, or her religious enthusiasm, but the

first time he saw the priest, he felt an invincible dislike for him, and

when his daughter asked him in the evening: "Well, what do you think of

him?"

"He is like an inquisitor!" he answered. "He seems to me a very

dangerous man."

When the peasants told him about the young priest's harshness and

bigotry and the sort of war of persecution he waged against natural laws

and instincts, his dislike changed to a violent hatred. He, the baron,

belonged to the school of philosophers who worship nature; to him it

seemed something touching, when he saw two animals unite, and he was

always ready to fall on his knees before the sort of pantheistic God he

worshiped; but he hated the catholic conception of a God, Who has petty

schemes, and gives way to tyrannical anger and indulges in mean revenge;

a God, in fact, Who seemed less to him than that boundless omnipotent

nature, which is at once life, light, earth, thought, plant, rock, man,

air, animal, planet, god and insect, that nature which produces all

things in such bountiful profusion, fitting each atom to the place it is

to occupy in space, be that position close to or far from the suns which

heat the worlds. Nature contained the germ of everything, and she

brought forth life and thought, as trees bear flowers and fruit.

To the baron, therefore, reproduction was a great law of Nature, and to

be respected as the sacred and divine act which accomplished the

constant, though unexpressed will of this Universal Being; and he at

once began a campaign against this priest who opposed the laws of

creation. It grieved Jeanne to the heart, and she prayed to the Lord,

and implored her father not to run counter to the cure, but the baron

always answered:

"It is everyone's right and duty to fight against such men, for they are

not like human creatures. They are not human," he repeated, shaking his

long white hair. "They understand nothing of life, and their conduct is

entirely influenced by their harmful dreams, which are contrary to

Nature." And he pronounced "contrary to Nature" as if he were uttering a

curse.

The priest had at once recognized in him an enemy, and, as he wished to

remain master of the chateau and its young mistress, he temporized,

feeling sure of victory in the end. By chance he had discovered the

_liaison_ between Julien and Gilberte, and his one idea was to break it

off by no matter what means. He came to see Jeanne one day towards the

end of the wet, mild winter, and, after a long talk on the mystery of

life, he asked her to unite with him in fighting against and destroying

the wickedness which was in her own family, and so save two souls which

were in danger. She asked him what he meant.

"The hour has not come for me to reveal all to you," he replied; "but I

will see you again soon," and with that he abruptly left her.

He came again in a few days, and spoke in vague terms of a disgraceful

connection between people whose conduct ought to be irreproachable. It

was the duty, he said, of those who were aware of what was going on, to

use every means to put an end to it. He used all sorts of lofty

arguments, and then, taking Jeanne's hand, adjured her to open her eyes,

to understand and to help him.

This time Jeanne saw what he meant, but terrified at the thought of all

the trouble that might be brought to her home, which was now so

peaceful, she pretended not to know to what he was alluding. Then he

hesitated no longer, but spoke in terms there could be no

misunderstanding.

"I am going to perform a very painful duty, Madame la comtesse, but I

cannot leave it undone. The position I hold forbids me to leave you in

ignorance of the sin you can prevent. Learn that your husband cherishes

a criminal affection for Madame de Fourville."

Jeanne only bent her head in feeble resignation.

"What do you intend to do?" asked the priest.

"What do you wish me to do, Monsieur l'abbe?" she murmured.

"Throw yourself in the way as an obstacle to this guilty love," he

answered, violently.

She began to cry, and said in a broken voice:

"But he has deceived me before with a servant; he wouldn't listen to me;

he doesn't love me now; he ill-treats me if I manifest any desire that

does not please him, so what can I do?"

The cure did not make any direct answer to this appeal.

"Then you bow before this sin! You submit to it!" he exclaimed. "You

consent to and tolerate adultery under your own roof! The crime is being

perpetrated before your eyes, and you refuse to see it! Are you a

Christian woman? Are you a wife and a mother?"

"What would you have me do?" she sobbed.

"Anything rather than allow this sin to continue," he replied.

"Anything, I tell you. Leave him. Flee from this house which has been

defiled."

"But I have no money, Monsieur l'abbe," she replied. "And I am not brave

now like I used to be. Besides, how can I leave without any proofs of

what you are saying? I have not the right to do so."

The priest rose to his feet, quivering with indignation.

"You are listening to the dictates of your cowardice, madame. I thought

you were a different woman, but you are unworthy of God's mercy."

She fell on her knees:

"Oh! Do not abandon me, I implore you. Advise me what to do."

"Open M. de Fourville's eyes," he said, shortly. "It is his duty to end

this _liaison_."

She was seized with terror at this advice.

"But he would kill them, Monsieur l'abbe! And should I be the one to

tell him? Oh, not that! Never, never!"

He raised his hand as if to curse her, his whole soul stirred with

anger.

"Live on in your shame and in your wickedness, for you are more guilty

than they are. You are the wife who condones her husband's sin! My place

is no longer here."

He turned to go, trembling all over with wrath. She followed him

distractedly, ready to give in, and beginning to promise; but he would

not listen to her and strode rapidly along, furiously shaking his big

blue umbrella which was nearly as high as himself. He saw Julien

standing near the gate superintending the pruning of some trees, so he

turned off to the left to reach the road by way of the Couillards' farm,

and as he walked he kept saying to Jeanne:

"Leave me, madame. I have nothing further to say to you."

In the middle of the yard, and right in his path, some children were

standing around the kennel of the dog Mirza, their attention

concentrated on something which the baron was also carefully considering

as he stood in their midst with his hands behind his back, looking like

a schoolmaster.

"Do come and see me again, Monsieur l'abbe," pleaded Jeanne. "If you

will return in a few days, I shall be able to tell you then what I think

is the best course to take, and we can talk it over together."

By that time they had almost reached the group of children (which the

baron had left, to avoid meeting and speaking to his enemy, the priest)

and the cure went to see what it was that was interesting them so

deeply. It was the dog whelping; five little pups were already crawling

round the mother, who gently licked them as she lay on her side before

the kennel, and just as the cure looked over the children's heads, a

sixth appeared. When they saw it, all the boys and girls clapped their

hands, crying:

"There's another! There's another!"

To them it was simply a perfectly pure and natural amusement, and they

watched these pups being born as they might have watched the apples

falling from a tree.

The Abbe Tolbiac stood still for a moment in horrified surprise, then,

giving way to his passion, he raised his umbrella and began to rain down

blows on the children's heads. The startled urchins ran off as fast as

they could go, and the abbe found himself left alone with the dog, which

was painfully trying to rise. Before she could stand up, he knocked her

back again, and began to hit her with all his strength. The animal

moaned pitifully as she writhed under these blows from which there was

no escape (for she was chained up) and at last the priest's umbrella

broke. Then, unable to beat the dog any longer, he jumped on her, and

stamped and crushed her under-foot in a perfect frenzy of anger. Another

pup was born beneath his feet before he dispatched the mother with a

last furious kick, and then the mangled body lay quivering in the midst

of the whining pups, which were awkwardly groping for their mother's

teats. Jeanne had escaped, but the baron returned and, almost as enraged

as the priest, suddenly seized the abbe by the throat, and giving him a

blow which knocked his hat off, carried him to the fence and threw him

out into the road.

When he turned round, M. le Perthuis saw his daughter kneeling in the

midst of the pups, sobbing as she picked them up and put them in her

skirt. He strode up to her gesticulating wildly.

"There!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that surpliced wretch,

now?"

The noise had brought the farmpeople to the spot, and they all stood

round, gazing at the remains of the dog.

"Could one have believed that a man would be so cruel as that!" said

Couillard's wife.

Jeanne picked up the pups, saying she would bring them up by hand; she

tried to give them some milk, but three out of seven died the next day.

Then old Simon went all over the neighborhood trying to find a

foster-mother for the others; he could not get a dog, but he brought

back a cat, asserting that she would do as well. Three more pups were

killed, and the seventh was given to the cat, who took to it directly,

and lay down on her side to suckle it. That it might not exhaust its

foster-mother the pup was weaned a fortnight later, and Jeanne undertook

to feed it herself with a feeding-bottle; she had named it Toto, but the

baron rechristened it, and called it Massacre.

The priest did not go to see Jeanne again. The next Sunday he hurled

curses and threats against the chateau, denouncing it as a plague-spot

which ought to be removed, and going on to anathematize the baron (who

laughed at him) and to make veiled, half-timid allusions to Julien's

latest amour. The vicomte was very vexed at this, but he did not dare

say anything for fear of giving rise to a scandal; and the priest

continued to call down vengeance on their heads, and to foretell the

downfall of God's enemies in every sermon. At last, Julien wrote a

decided, though respectful, letter to the archbishop, and the Abbe

Tolbiac, finding himself threatened with disgrace, ceased his

denunciations. He began to take long solitary walks; often he was to be

met striding along the roads with an ardent, excited look on his face.

Gilberte and Julien were always seeing him when they were out riding,

sometimes in the distance, on the other side of a common, or on the edge

of the cliff, sometimes close at hand, reading his breviary in a narrow

valley they were just about to pass through; they always turned another

way to avoid passing him. Spring had come, enflaming their hearts with

fresh desires, and urging them to seek each other's embraces in any

secluded spot to which their rides might lead them; but the leaves were

only budding, the grass was still damp from the rains of winter, and

they could not, as in the height of summer, hide themselves amidst the

undergrowth of the woods. Lately, they had generally sheltered their

caresses within a movable shepherd's hut which had been left since

autumn, on the very top of the Vaucotte hill. It stood all alone on the

edge of the precipitous descent to the valley, five hundred yards above

the cliff. There they felt quite secure, for they overlooked the whole

of the surrounding country, and they fastened their horses to the shafts

to wait until their masters were satiated with love.

One evening as they were leaving the hut, they saw the Abbe Tolbiac

sitting on the hill-side, nearly hidden by the rushes.

"We must leave our horses in that ravine, another time," said Julien;

"in case they should tell our whereabouts," and thenceforth they always

tied their horses up in a kind of recess in the valley, which was hidden

by bushes.

Another evening, they were both returning to La Vrillette where the

comte was expecting Julien to dinner, when they met the cure coming out

of the chateau. He bowed, without looking them in the face, and stood on

one side to let them pass. For the moment his visit made them uneasy,

but their anxiety was soon dispelled.

* * * * *

Jeanne was sitting by the fire reading, one windy afternoon at the

beginning of May, when she suddenly saw the Comte de Fourville running

towards the chateau at such a rate as to make her fear he was the

bearer of bad news. She hastened downstairs to meet him, and when she

saw him close, she thought he must have gone mad. He had on his

shooting-jacket and a big fur cap, that he generally only wore on his

own grounds, and he was so pale that his red moustaches (which, as a

rule, hardly showed against his ruddy face) looked the color of flame.

His eyes were haggard and stared vacantly or rolled from side to side.

"My wife is here, isn't she?" he gasped.

"No," answered Jeanne, too frightened to think of what she was saying;

"I have not seen her at all to-day."

The comte dropped into a chair, as if his legs had no longer strength to

support him, and, taking off his cap, he mechanically passed his

handkerchief several times across his forehead; then he started to his

feet, and went towards Jeanne with outstretched hands, and mouth opened

to speak and tell her of his terrible grief. But suddenly he stopped

short, and fixing his eyes on her, murmured, as if he were delirious:

"But it is your husband--you also--" and breaking off abruptly, he

rushed out towards the sea.

Jeanne ran after him, calling him and imploring him to stop. "He knows

all!" she thought, in terror. "What will he do? Oh, pray heaven he may

not find them."

He did not listen to her, and evidently knowing whither to direct his

steps, ran straight on without any hesitation as to the path he should

take. Already he had leapt across the ditch, and was rapidly striding

across the reeds towards the cliff. Finding she could not catch him up,

Jeanne stood on the slope beyond the wood, and watched him as long as

he was in sight; then, when she could see him no longer, she went

indoors again, tortured with fear and anxiety.

When he reached the edge of the cliff, the comte turned to the right,

and again began to run. The sea was very rough, and one after the other

the heavy clouds came up and poured their contents on the land. A

whistling moaning wind swept over the grass, laying low the young

barley, and carrying the great, white seagulls inland like sprays of

foam. The rain, which came in gusts, beat in the comte's face and

drenched his cheeks and moustaches, and the tumult of the elements

seemed to fill his heart as well as his ears. There, straight before him

in the distance, lay the Vaucotte valley, and between it and him stood a

solitary shepherd's hut, with two horses tied to the shafts. (What fear

could there be of anyone seeing them on such a day as this?)

As soon as he caught sight of the animals, the comte threw himself flat

on the ground, and dragged himself along on his hands and knees, his

hairy cap and mud-stained clothes making him look like some monstrous

animal. He crawled to the lonely hut, and, in case its occupants should

see him through the cracks in the planks he hid himself beneath it. The

horses had seen him and were pawing the ground. He slowly cut the reins

by which they were fastened with a knife that he held open in his hand,

and, as a fresh gust of wind swept by, the two animals cantered off,

their backs stung by the hail which lashed against the sloping roof of

the shepherd's cot, and made the frail abode tremble on its wheels.

Then the comte rose to his knees, put his eye to the slit at the bottom

of the door, and remained perfectly motionless while he watched and

waited. Some time passed thus, and then he suddenly leapt to his feet,

covered with mire from head to foot. Furiously he fastened the bolt,

which secured the shelter on the outside, and seizing the shafts, he

shook the hut as if he would have broken it to atoms. After a moment he

began to drag it along--exerting the strength of a bull, and bending

nearly double in his tremendous effort--and it was towards the almost

perpendicular slope to the valley that he hurried the cottage and its

human occupants who were desperately shouting and trying to burst open

the door, in their ignorance of what had happened.

At the extreme edge of the slope, the comte let go of the hut, and it at

once begun to run down towards the valley. At first it moved but slowly,

but, its speed increasing as it went, it moved quicker and quicker,

until soon it was rushing down the hill at a tremendous rate. Its shafts

bumped along the ground and it leaped over and dashed against the

obstacles in its path, as if it had been endowed with life; it bounded

over the head of an old beggar who was crouching in a ditch, and, as it

passed, the man heard frightful cries issuing from within it. All at

once one of the wheels was torn off, and the hut turned over on its

side. That however, did not stop it, and now it rolled over and over

like a ball, or like some house uprooted from its foundations and hurled

from the summit of a mountain. It rolled on and on until it reached the

edge of the last ravine; there it took a final leap, and after

describing a curve, fell to the earth, and smashed like an egg-shell.

Directly it had dashed upon the rocks at the bottom of the valley, the

old beggar, who had seen it falling, began to make his way down through

the brambles. He did not go straight to the shattered hut, but, like the

cautious rustic that he was, went to announce the accident at the

nearest farm-house. The farm people ran to the spot the beggar pointed

out, and beneath the fragments of the hut, found two bruised and mangled

corpses. The man's forehead was split open, and his face crushed; the

woman's jaw was almost separated from her head, and their broken limbs

were as soft as if there had not been a bone beneath the flesh. Still

the farmers could recognize them, and they began to make all sorts of

conjectures as to the cause of the accident.

"What could they have been doin' in the cabin?" said a woman.

The old beggar replied that apparently they had taken refuge from the

weather, and that the high wind had overturned the hut, and blown it

down the precipice. He added that he himself was going to take shelter

in it when he saw the horses fastened to the shafts and concluded that

the place was already occupied.

"If it hadn't been for that I should have been where they are now," he

said with an air of self-congratulation.

"Perhaps it would have been all the better if you had been," said some

one.

"Why would it have been better?" exclaimed the beggar in a great rage.

"'Cause I'm poor and they're rich? Look at them now!" he said, pointing

to the two corpses with his hooked stick, as he stood trembling and

ragged, with the water dripping from him, and his battered hat, his

matted beard, his long unkempt hair, making him look terribly dirty and

miserable. "We're all equal when we're dead."

The group had grown bigger, and the peasants stood round with a

frightened, cowardly look on their faces. After a discussion as to what

they had better do, it was finally decided to carry the bodies back to

their homes, in the hope of getting a reward. Two carts were got ready,

and then a fresh difficulty arose; some thought it would be quite enough

to place straw at the bottom of the carts, and others thought it would

look better to put mattresses.

"But the mattresses would be soaked with blood," cried the woman who had

spoken before. "They'd have to be washed with _eau de javelle_."

"The chateau people'll pay for that," said a jolly-faced farmer. "They

can't expect to get things for nothing."

That decided the matter, and the two carts set off, one to the right,

the other to the left, jolting and shaking the remains of these two

beings who had so often been clasped in each other's arms, but who would

never meet again.

When the comte had seen the hut set off on its terrible journey, he had

fled away through the rain and the wind, and had run on and on across

the country like a madman. He ran for several hours, heedless of which

way his steps were taking him, and, at nightfall, he found himself at

his own chateau. The servants were anxiously awaiting his return, and

hastened to tell him that the two horses had just returned riderless,

for Julien's had followed the other one.

M. de Fourville staggered back. "Some accident must have happened to my

wife and the vicomte," he said in broken tones. "Let everyone go and

look for them."

He started off again, himself, as though he were going to seek them,

but, as soon as he was out of sight, he hid behind a bush, and watched

the road along which the woman he still loved so dearly would be brought

dead or dying, or perhaps maimed and disfigured for life. In a little

while a cart passed by, bearing a strange load; it drew up before the

chateau-gates, then passed through them. Yes, he knew it was she; but

the dread of hearing the horrible truth forced him to stay in his

hiding-place, and he crouched down like a hare, trembling at the

faintest rustle.

He waited for an hour--perhaps two--and yet the cart did not come back

again. He was persuaded that his wife was dying, and the thought of

seeing her, of meeting her eyes was such a torture to him, that, seized

with a sudden fear of being discovered and compelled to witness her

death, he again set off running, and did not stop till he was hidden in

the midst of a wood. Then he thought that perhaps she needed help and

that there was no one to take care of her as he could, and he sped back

in mad haste.

As he was going into the house, he met his gardener.

"Well?" he cried, excitedly.

The man dared not answer the truth.

"Is she dead?" almost yelled M. de Fourville.

"Yes, Monsieur le comte," stammered the servant.

The comte experienced an intense relief at the answer; all his agitation

left him, and he went quietly and firmly up the steps.

In the meantime, the other cart had arrived at Les Peuples. Jeanne saw

it in the distance, and guessing that a corpse lay upon the mattress,

understood at once what had happened; the shock was so great that she

fell to the ground unconscious. When she came to herself again she found

her father supporting her head, and bathing her forehead with vinegar.

"Do you know--?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Yes, father," she whispered, trying to rise; but she was in such pain

that she was forced to sink back again.

That evening she gave birth to a dead child--a girl.

She did not see or hear anything of Julien's funeral, for she was

delirious when he was buried. In a few days she was conscious of Aunt

Lison's presence in her room, and, in the midst of the feverish

nightmares by which she was haunted, she strove to recall when, and

under what circumstances, the old maid had last left Les Peuples. But

even in her lucid moments she could not remember, and she could only

feel sure she had seen her since the baroness's death.

* * * * *