uttered them with all their eloquence. The sentences
came from her mouth with their proper rhythm, their heart-rending pathos
and their tears, as from the mouth of an admirable actress. There were
bursts of tenderness, interlarded with shrieks; then there were
outbreaks of rebellion, fierce bursts of passion, and the most
extraordinary, biting, implacable irony, always merging into a paroxysm
of nervous laughter that repeated the same result and prolonged it from
echo to echo. Mademoiselle was confounded, stupefied, and listened as at
the theatre. Never had she heard disdain hurled down from so lofty a
height, contempt so tear itself to tatters and gush forth in laughter, a
woman's words express such a fierce thirst for vengeance against a man.
She ransacked her memory: such play of feature, such intonations, such a
dramatic and heart-rending voice as that voice of a consumptive coughing
away her life, she could not remember since the days of Mademoiselle
Rachel.

At last Germinie awoke abruptly, her eyes filled with the tears of her
dream, and jumped down from the bed, seeing that her mistress had
returned. "Thanks," said mademoiselle, "don't disturb yourself! Wallow
about on my bed all you please!"

"Oh! mademoiselle," said Germinie, "I wasn't lying where you put your
head. I have made it nice and warm for your feet."

"Indeed! Suppose you tell me what you've been dreaming? There was a man
in it--you were having a dispute with him----"

"Dream?" said Germinie, "I don't remember."

She silently set about undressing her mistress, trying to recall her
dream. When she had put her in bed, she said, drawing near to her: "Ah!
mademoiselle, won't you give me a fortnight, for once, to go home? I
remember now."

XLII

Soon after this, mademoiselle was amazed to notice an entire change in
her maid's manner and habits. Germinie no longer had her sullen, savage
moods, her outbreaks of rebellion, her fits of muttering words
expressive of discontent. She suddenly threw off her indolence and
became once more an energetic worker. She no longer passed hours in
doing her marketing; she seemed to avoid the street. She ceased to go
out in the evening; indeed, she hardly stirred from mademoiselle's side,
hovering about her and watching her from the time she rose in the
morning until she went to bed at night, lavishing continuous, incessant,
almost irritating attentions upon her, never allowing her to rise or
even to put ou