d's nest full of young ones, squeaking,
with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the most
violent emotion.

Poor solitary beings! Tristias and wanderers from table d'hote to table
d'hote, poor beings, ridiculous and lamentable. I love you ever since I
became acquainted with Miss Harriet!

I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but
she dare not, and I was amused at her timidity. When I started out in
the morning with my box on my back, she accompanied me as far as the end
of the village, silent, but evidently struggling inwardly to find words
with which to begin a conversation. Then she left me abruptly, and, with
a jaunty step, walked away quickly.

One day, however, she plucked up courage:

"I would like to see how you paint pictures? Will you? I have been very
curious."[3]

And she colored up as though she had given utterance to words extremely
audacious.

I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had commenced a
large picture.

She remained standing near me, following all my gestures with
concentrated attention. Then, suddenly, fearing, perhaps, that she was
disturbing me she said to me: "Thank you," and walked away.

But in a short time she became more familiar, and accompanied me every
day, her countenance exhibiting visible pleasure. She carried her
folding stool under her arm, and would not consent to my carrying it,
and she sat always by my side. She would remain there for hours,
immovable and mute, following with her eye the point of my brush, in its
every movement. When I would obtain, by a large splatch of color spread
on with a knife, a striking and unexpected effect, she would, in spite
of herself, give vent to a half-suppressed "Ah!" of astonishment, of
joy, of admiration. She had the most tender respect for my canvases, an
almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a part of
nature's work divine. My studies appeared to her as a kind of pictures
of sanctity, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of
converting me.

Oh! He was a queer good-natured being, this God of hers. He was a sort
of village philosopher without any great resources, and without great
power; for she always figured him to herself as a being quivering over
injustices committed under his eyes, and as though he was helpless to
prevent them.

She was, however, on excellent terms with him, affecting even to be the
confidant of his secrets