stitution which the least toil wearied. She was truly a
daughter of the people of Paris, where children, seldom handsome, and of
no vigor, the product of poverty and toil, of homes without fresh air,
without freedom of action, without any of the conveniences of life, meet
us at every turn.

At the time of the marriage, Celeste was seen to be a little woman, fair
and faded almost to sickliness, fat, slow, and silly in the countenance.
Her forehead, much too large and too prominent, suggested water on the
brain, and beneath that waxen cupola her face, noticeably too small and
ending in a point like the nose of a mouse, made some people fear she
would become, sooner or later, imbecile. Her eyes, which were light
blue, and her lips, always fixed in a smile, did not contradict that
idea. On the solemn occasion of her marriage she had the manner, air,
and attitude of a person condemned to death, whose only desire is that
it might all be over speedily.

"She is rather round," said Colleville to Thuillier.

Brigitte was just the knife to cut into such a nature, to which her own
formed the strongest contrast. Mademoiselle Thuillier was remarkable for
her regular and correct beauty, but a beauty injured by toil which, from
her very childhood, had bent her down to painful, thankless tasks, and
by the secret privations she imposed upon herself in order to amass her
little property. Her complexion, early discolored, had something the
tint of steel. Her brown eyes were framed in brown; on the upper lip
was a brown floss like a sort of smoke. Her lips were thin, and her
imperious forehead was surmounted by hair once black, now turning to
chinchilla. She held herself as straight as the fairest beauty; but all
things else about her showed the hardiness of her life, the deadening of
her natural fire, the cost of what she was!

To Brigitte, Celeste was simply a fortune to lay hold of, a future
mother to rule, one more subject in her empire. She soon reproached her
for being _weak_, a constant word in her vocabulary, and the jealous
old maid, who would strongly have resented any signs of activity in
her sister-in-law, now took a savage pleasure in prodding the
languid inertness of the feeble creature. Celeste, ashamed to see her
sister-in-law displaying such energy in household work, endeavored to
help her, and fell ill in consequence. Instantly, Brigitte was devoted
to her, nursed her like a beloved sister, and would say, in presence