er bed. She would gaze at them and touch them; she would lay
them out on the bed; she would sit for hours weeping over them, kissing
them, talking to them, saying the things that a mother's bitter sorrow
is wont to say to a little daughter's ghost.

While weeping for her daughter the unhappy creature wept for herself as
well. A voice whispered to her that she was saved had the child lived;
that to have that child to love was her Providence; that all that she
dreaded in herself would be expended upon that dear head and be
sanctified there--her affections, her unreasoning impulses, her ardor,
all the passions of her nature. It seemed to her that she had felt her
mother's heart soothing and purifying her woman's heart. In her
daughter she saw a sort of celestial vision that would redeem her and
make her whole, a little angel of deliverance as it were, issuing from
her errors to fight for her and rescue her from the evil influences
which pursued her and by which she sometimes thought that she was
possessed.

When she began to recover from the first prostration of despair, when,
as the consciousness of life and the perception of objects returned to
her, she looked about her with eyes that saw, she was aroused from her
grief by a more poignant cause of bitterness of spirit.

Madame Jupillon, who had become too stout and too heavy to do what it
was necessary for her to do at the creamery, notwithstanding all the
assistance rendered by Germinie, had sent to her province for a niece of
hers. She was the embodiment of the blooming youth of the country, a
woman in whom there was still something of the child, active and
vivacious, with black eyes full of sunlight, lips as round and red as
cherries, the summer heat of her province in her complexion, the warmth
of perfect health in her blood. Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, the
girl had, at first, drawn near to her cousin, simply and naturally,
obeying the law of attraction that draws the young toward the young. She
had met his friendly advances with the immodesty of innocence, artless
effrontery, the liberties taught by life in the country, the happy folly
of a nature abounding in high spirits, and with all sorts of ignorant
hardihood, unblushing ingenuousness and rustic coquetry, against which
her cousin's vanity was without means of defence. The child's presence
deprived Germinie of all hope of repose. Mere girl as she was, she
wounded her every minute in the day by her pres