breathing,
in what was almost distinguishable as a snore. I was just going to slip
away when something, probably the sound of my entry, interrupted her
sleep, and made it 'change speed,' as they say of motorcars nowadays,
for the music of her snore broke off for a second and began again on a
lower note; then she awoke, and half turned her face, which I could see
for the first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she
had just escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from
where she was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go
forward or to retire; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense
of reality, and to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified
her; a smile of joy, a pious act of thanksgiving to God, Who is pleased
to grant that life shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined
her face, and, with the habit she had formed of speaking to herself,
half-aloud, when she thought herself alone, she murmured: "The Lord be
praised! We have nothing to disturb us here but the kitchen-maid's baby.
And I've been dreaming that my poor Octave had come back to life, and
was trying to make me take a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand
towards her rosary, which was lying on the small table, but sleep was
once again getting the mastery, and did not leave her the strength to
reach it; she fell asleep, calm and contented, and I crept out of the
room on tiptoe, without either her or anyone's else ever knowing, from
that day to this, what I had seen and heard.

When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon
the greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
Francoise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to
her general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She
was so well 'routined' to it, as Francoise would say, that if, on a
Saturday, she had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour,
it would have 'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary
day, to put her luncheon forward to its Saturday time. Incidentall