g straw, allowing no one to assist her. All
that La Teuse had to do was to wash her afterwards. The poultry-yard was
situated behind the cemetery; and Desiree often had to jump the wall,
and run hither and thither among the graves after some fowl whom
curiosity had led astray. Right at the end was a shed giving
accommodation to the fowls and the rabbits; to the right was a little
stable for the goat. Moreover, all the animals lived together; the
rabbits ran about with the fowls, the nanny-goat would take a footbath
in the midst of the ducks; the geese, the turkeys, the guinea-fowls,
and the pigeons all fraternised in the company of three cats. Whenever
Desiree appeared at the wooden fence which prevented her charges from
making their way into the church, a deafening uproar greeted her.

'Eh! can't you hear them?' she said to her brother, as they reached the
dining-room door.

But, when she had admitted him and closed the gate behind them, she was
assailed so violently that she almost disappeared. The ducks and the
geese, opening and shutting their beaks, tugged at her skirts; the
greedy hens sprang up and pecked her hands; the rabbits squatted on her
feet and then bounded up to her knees; whilst the three cats leapt upon
her shoulders, and the goat bleated in its stable at being unable to
reach her.

'Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!' she cried with a hearty
sonorous laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks
and paws rubbing against her.

However, she did not attempt to free herself. As she often said, she
would have let herself be devoured; it seemed so sweet to feel all this
life cling to her and encompass her with the warmth of eider-down. At
last only one cat persisted in remaining on her back.

'It's Moumou,' she said. 'His paws are like velvet.' Then, calling her
brother's attention to the yard, she proudly added: 'See, how clean it
is!'

The yard had indeed been swept out, washed, and raked over. But the
disturbed water and the forked-up litter exhaled so fetid and powerful
an odour that Abbe Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the
graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.

'What a pile, eh?' continued Desiree, leading her brother into the
pungent vapour, 'I put it all there myself, nobody helped me. Go on, it
isn't dirty. It cleans. Look at my arms.'

As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into
a pail of water--regal arms they were, superbly r