efore
she had leaped out, tossed her ticket to the ticket-taker, and started
at a run on the Pommeuse road, leaving Jupillon behind. She drew nearer
and nearer, she could see the house, she was there: yes, there was the
child! She would pounce upon her, snatch her from the nurse's arms with
jealous hands--a mother's hands!--hug her, strain her to her heart, kiss
her, devour her with kisses and looks and smiles! She would gaze
admiringly at her for an instant and then, distraught with joy, mad with
love, would cover her with kisses to the tips of her little bare toes.
Breakfast would be served. She would sit at the table with the child on
her knees and eat nothing: she had kissed her so much that she had not
yet looked at her, and she would begin to seek out points of resemblance
to themselves in the little one. One feature was his, another
hers:--"She has your nose and my eyes. Her hair will be like yours in
time. It will curl! Look, those are your hands--she is all you." And for
hours she would continue the inexhaustible and charming prattle of a
woman who is determined to give a man his share of their daughter.
Jupillon submitted to it all with reasonably good grace, thanks to
divers three-sou cigars Germinie always produced from her pocket and
gave to him one by one. Then he had found a means of diversion; the
Morin flowed at the foot of the garden. Jupillon was a true Parisian: he
loved to fish with a pole and line.

And when summer came they stayed there all day, at the foot of the
garden, on the bank of the stream--Jupillon on a laundry board resting
on two stakes, pole in hand, and Germinie sitting, with the child in her
skirts, under the medlar tree that overhung the stream. On pleasant
days, the sun poured down upon the broad sparkling current, from which
beams of light arose as from a mirror. It was like a display of
fireworks from the sky and the stream, amid which Germinie would hold
the little girl upon her feet and let her trample upon her with her
little bare pink legs, in her short baby dress, her skin shimmering in
spots in the sunlight, her flesh mottled with sunbeams like the flesh of
angels Germinie had seen in pictures. She had a divinely sweet sensation
when the little one, with the active hands of children that cannot talk,
touched her chin and mouth and cheeks, persisted in putting her fingers
in her eyes, rested them playfully on the lids, and kept them moving
over her whole face, tickling and t