lculated the most favourable hour for forcing
open the gate of the Bishop's garden. But already, also, the agony, the
grave uneasiness, the torment of a doubt had come back to her. Were she
to yield to evil she would suffer eternal remorse in consequence. Hours,
most abominable hours, passed in this uncertainty as to what part she
should take under this tempestuous wind, which constantly threw her from
the revolt of her love to the horror of a fault. And she came out of the
contest weakened by each victory over her heart.

One evening, as she was about leaving the house to go to join Felicien,
she suddenly thought of her little book from the Society of Aid to
Abandoned Children. She was so distressed to find that she no longer had
strength to resist her pride. She took it from the depths of the chest
of drawers, turned over its leaves, whispered to herself at each page
the lowness of her birth, so eager was she in her need of humility.
Father and mother unknown; no name; nothing but a date and a number; a
complete neglect, like that of a wild plant that grows by the roadside!
Then crowds of memories came to her: the rich pastures of the Mievre and
the cows she had watched there; the flat route of Soulanges, where she
had so often walked barefooted; and Maman Nini, who boxed her ears when
she stole apples. Certain pages specially attracted her by their painful
associations:--those which certified every three months to the visits
of the under-inspector and of the physician, whose signatures were
sometimes accompanied by observations or information, as, for instance,
a severe illness, during which she had almost died; a claim from her
nurse on the subject of a pair of shoes that had been burnt; and bad
marks that had been given her for her uncontrollable temper. It was, in
short, the journal of her misery. But one thing disturbed her above all
others--the report in reference to the breaking of the necklace she
had worn until she was six years of age. She recollected that she had
instinctively hated it, this string of beads of bone, cut in the shape
of little olives, strung on a silken cord, and fastened by a medallion
of plaited silver, bearing the date of her entrance into the "Home" and
her number. She considered it as a badge of slavery, and tried several
times to break it with her little hands, without any fear as to the
consequences of doing so. Then, when older, she complained that it
choked her. For a year longer she