the warm glow of health, and
the joy of living beat its wings in her breast like a bird in the
sunlight.

A marvelous animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy that
once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling,
restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the
dejection, the prostration, the supineness, the sluggishness that
formerly distinguished her. The heavy, drowsy feeling in the morning was
a thing of the past; she awoke feeling fresh and bright, and alive in an
instant to the cheer of the new day. She dressed in haste, playfully;
her agile fingers moved of themselves, and she was amazed to be so
bright and full of activity during the hours of faintness before
breakfast, when she had so often felt her heart upon her lips. And
throughout the day she had the same consciousness of physical
well-being, the same briskness of movement. She must be always on the
move, walking, running, doing something, expending her strength. At
times all that she had lived through seemed to have no existence; the
sensations of living that she had hitherto experienced seemed to her
like a far-off dream, or as if dimly seen in the background of a
sleeping memory. The past lay behind her, as if she had traversed it,
covered with a veil like one in a swoon, or with the unconsciousness of
a somnambulist. It was the first time that she had experienced the
feeling, the impression, at once bitter and sweet, violent and
celestial, of the game of life brilliant in its plenitude, its
regularity and its power.

She ran up and downstairs for a nothing. At a word from mademoiselle she
would trip down the whole five flights. When she was seated, her feet
danced on the floor. She brushed and scrubbed and beat and shook and
washed and set to rights, without rest or reprieve, always at work,
filling the apartment with her goings and comings, and the incessant
bustle that followed her about.--"Mon Dieu!" her mistress would say,
stunned by the uproar she made, just like a child,--"you're turning
things upside down, Germinie! that will do for that!"

One day, when she went into Germinie's kitchen, mademoiselle saw a
little earth in a cigar box on the leads.--"What's that?" she
asked.--"That's grass--that I planted--to look at," said Germinie.--"So
you're in love with grass now, eh? All you need now is to have
canaries!"

XI

In the course of a few months, Germinie's life, her whole li