re all
pregnant; and Jeanne was continually hearing of the misconduct of some
girl, some married woman with a family, or of some rich farmer who had
been held in general respect.

This warm spring seemed to revive the passions of mankind as it revived
the plants and the flowers; but to Jeanne, whose senses were dead, and
whose wounded heart and romantic soul were alone stirred by the warm
springtide breezes, and who only dreamed of the poetic side of love,
these bestial desires were revolting and hateful. She was angry with
Gilberte, not for having robbed her of her husband, but for having
bespattered herself with this filth. The comtesse was not of the same
class as the peasants, who could not resist their brutal desires; then
how could she have fallen into the same abomination?

The very day that her parents were to arrive, Julien increased his
wife's disgust by telling her laughingly, as though it were something
quite natural and very funny, that the baker having heard a noise in his
oven the day before, which was not baking day, had gone to see what it
was, and instead of finding the stray cat he expected to see, had
surprised his wife, "who was certainly not putting bread into the oven."
"The baker closed the mouth of the oven," went on Julien, "and they
would have been suffocated if the baker's little boy, who had seen his
mother go into the oven with the blacksmith, had not told the neighbors
what was going on." He laughed as he added, "That will give a nice
flavor to the bread. It is just like a tale of La Fontaine's."

For some time after that Jeanne could not touch bread.

When the post-chaise drew up before the door with the baron's smiling
face looking out of the window, Jeanne felt fonder of her parents and
more pleased to see them than she had ever been before; but when she saw
her mother she was overcome with surprise and grief. The baroness looked
ten years older than when she had left Les Peuples six months before.
Her huge, flabby cheeks were suffused with blood, her eyes had a glazed
look, and she could not move a step unless she was supported on either
side; she drew her breath with so much difficulty that only to hear her
made everyone around her draw theirs painfully also.

The baron, who had lived with her and seen her every day, had not
noticed the gradual change in his wife, and if she had complained or
said her breathing and the heavy feeling about her heart were getting
worse, he had answ