t her hand for anything, waiting upon her and keeping
watch of her as if she were a child. At times mademoiselle was so worn
out with her, so weary of this constant fussing about her person, that
she would open her mouth to say: "Come, come! aren't you almost ready to
clear out!" But Germinie would look up at her with a smile, a smile so
sad and sweet that it checked the impatient exclamation on the old
maid's lips. And so she stayed on with her, going about with a sort of
fascinated, divinely stolid air, in the impassibility of profound
adoration, buried in almost idiotic contemplation.

At that period all the poor girl's affection turned to mademoiselle. Her
voice, her gestures, her eyes, her silence, her thoughts, went out to
her mistress with the fervor of expiation, with the contrition of a
prayer, the rapt intensity of a cult. She loved her with all the loving
violence of her nature. She loved her with all the deceptive ardor of
her passion. She strove to give her all that she had not given her, all
that others had taken from her. Every day her love clung more closely,
more devoutly, to the old maid, who was conscious of being enveloped,
embraced, agreeably warmed by the heat from those two arms that were
thrown about her old age.

XLIII

But the past and its debts were still there, and whispered to her every
hour: "If mademoiselle knew!"

She lived in the constant panic of a guilty woman, trembling with dread
from morning till night. There was never a ring at the door that she did
not say to herself: "It has come at last!" Letters in a strange
handwriting filled her with anxiety. She would feel of the wax with her
fingers, bury the letters in her pocket, hesitate about delivering them,
and the moment when mademoiselle unfolded the terrible paper and scanned
its contents with the inexpressive eye of elderly people was as full of
suspense to her as if she were awaiting sentence of death. She felt that
her secret and her falsehood were in everybody's hand. The house had
seen her and might speak. The quarter knew her as she was. Of all about
her, there was no one but her mistress whose esteem she could still
steal.

As she went in and out, the concierge looked at her with a smile and a
glance, that said: "I know." She no longer dared to call him: "My
Pipelet." When she returned home he looked into her basket. "I am so
fond of that!" his wife would say, when it contained some tempting
morsel. At night sh