and now and then
she was able to remember episodes of an entire month, bringing them
up one by one, grouping them together, and connecting together all
those little matters which had preceded or followed some important
event. She succeeded by sheer force of attention, by force of memory
and of concentrated will power in bringing back to mind almost
completely her two first years at Peuples. Distant memories of her
life came back to her with a singular facility, bringing a kind of
relief; but the later years seemed to lose themselves in a mist--to
become mixt one with another: and sometimes she would stay for an
indefinite time, her head bowed on one of the calendars, her mind full
of the past, and yet not being able to remember whether it was in this
or that calendar that such or such a remembrance ought to be
tabulated. She placed them around the room like the pictures of the
Way of the Cross--those tableaux of days that were no more. Then she
would abruptly set down her chair before one of them; and there she
would sit until night came, staring at it, immobile, buried in her
dreams of remembrance.

One morning Rosalie came earlier than usual into her room, and said,
setting down upon the table the bowl of coffee: "Come now, drink this
up quickly. Denis is down-stairs waiting for us at the door. We are
going over to Peuples to-day: I've got some business over there."

Jeanne thought that she was going to faint, so deep was her emotion.
She drest herself, frightened and tremulous at the mere idea of seeing
again that dear house.

A radiant sky spread out above over all the world, and the horse, in
fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes broke into a gallop. When
they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne's heart beat so fast
that she could hardly breathe, and when she saw from a distance the
brick pillars of the boundary-line of her old home, she exclaimed in a
low voice two or three times, "Oh!--oh!--oh!--" as if something had
happened to change her whole heart.

They left the wagon with the Couillards: then, while Rosalie and her
son went off to attend to their business, the caretakers offered to
take Jeanne over the chateau, the present owners of it being away; so
they gave her the keys.

She set out alone, and when she was fairly before the old manor-house
by the seaside, she stopt to look at it once again. It had changed in
nothing outside. The large, grayish building that day showed upon its
old wa