determined to belong thenceforth to no one, as that was the only method
by which she could still belong to him.

She began to spy upon him, to make a study of his usual hours for going
out, the streets he passed through, the places that he visited. She
followed him to Batignolles, to his new quarters, walked behind him,
content to put her foot where he had put his, to be guided by his steps,
to see him now and then, to notice a gesture that he made, to snatch one
of his glances. That was all: she dared not speak to him; she kept at
some distance behind, like a lost dog, happy not to be driven away with
kicks.

For weeks and weeks she made herself thus the man's shadow, a humble,
timid shadow that shrank back and moved away a few steps when it thought
it was in danger of being seen; then drew nearer again with faltering
steps, and, at an impatient movement from the man, stopped once more, as
if asking pardon.

Sometimes she waited at the door of a house which he entered, caught him
up again when he came out and escorted him home, always at a distance,
without speaking to him, with the air of a beggar begging for crumbs
and thankful for what she was allowed to pick up. Then she would listen
at the shutters of the ground-floor apartment in which he lived, to
ascertain if he was alone, if there was anybody there.

When he had a woman on his arm, although she suffered keenly, she was
the more persistent in following him. She went where they went to the
end. She entered the public gardens and ballrooms behind them. She
walked within sound of their laughter and their words, tore her heart to
tatters looking at them and listening to them, and stood at their backs
with every jealous instinct of her nature bleeding.

LVII

It was November. For three or four days Germinie had not fallen in with
Jupillon. She went to hover about his lodgings, watching for him. When
she reached the street on which he lived, she saw a broad beam of light
struggling out through the closed shutters. She approached and heard
bursts of laughter, the clinking of glasses, women's voices, then a song
and one voice, that of the woman whom she hated with all the hatred
of her heart, whom she would have liked to see lying dead before
her, and whose death she had so often sought to discover in the
coffee-grounds,--the cousin!

She glued her ear to the shutter, breathing in what they said, absorbed
in the torture of listening to them, pasturing