ed with sheets. Then a hall,
which led to the study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves
of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk.
Two panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache
landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and vanished
luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted Felicite's room,
which looked out upon the meadows.

She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked without
interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the dishes cleared
away and the door securely locked, she would bury the log under the
ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth with a rosary in her hand.
Nobody could bargain with greater obstinacy, and as for cleanliness,
the lustre on her brass sauce-pans was the envy and despair of other
servants. She was most economical, and when she ate she would gather up
crumbs with the tip of her finger, so that nothing should be wasted of
the loaf of bread weighing twelve pounds which was baked especially for
her and lasted three weeks.

Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with a
pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings, and an
apron with a bib like those worn by hospital nurses.

Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she
looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her
age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working
automatically.

CHAPTER II

Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her father,
who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding. Then her
mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a farmer took her
in, and while she was quite small, let her keep cows in the fields. She
was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the slightest offence and finally
dismissed for a theft of thirty sous which she did not commit. She took
service on another farm where she tended the poultry; and as she was
well thought of by her master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous.

One evening in August (she was then eighteen years old), they persuaded
her to accompany them to the fair at Colleville. She was immediately
dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the brightness of the
dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the crowd of people all
hopping at the same time. She was standing modestly at a distance, when
presently a young man of