greatly in need of stimulants, exhausted the
young woman's strength, reduced her flesh and undermined her
constitution. She had a terrifying aspect. Her complexion changed to
that dead white that looks green in the daylight. Her swollen eyes were
surrounded with a great, bluish shadow. Her discolored lips assumed the
hue of faded violets. Her breath failed her at the slightest ascent, and
the incessant vibrating sound that came from the arteries of her throat
was painful to those near her. With heavy feet and enfeebled body, she
dragged herself along, as if life were too heavy a burden for her. Her
faculties and her senses were so torpid that she swooned for no cause at
all, for so small a matter as the fatigue of combing her mistress's
hair.

She was silently drooping there when her sister found her another place,
with a former actor, a retired comedian, living upon the money that the
laughter of all Paris had brought him. The good man was old and had
never had any children. He took pity on the wretched girl, interested
himself in her welfare, took care of her and made much of her. He took
her into the country. He walked with her on the boulevards in the
sunlight, and enjoyed the warmth the more for leaning on her arm. It
delighted him to see her in good spirits. Often, to amuse her, he would
take down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe and try to remember a
fragment of some part that had gone from his memory. The mere sight of
this little maid and her white cap was like a ray of returning youth to
him. In his old age, Jocrisse leaned upon her with the good-fellowship,
the pleasures and the childish fancies of a grandfather's heart. But he
died after a few months, and Germinie had fallen back into the service
of kept mistresses, boarding-house keepers, and passageway tradesmen,
when the sudden death of a maidservant gave her an opportunity to enter
the service of Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, then living on Rue Taitbout,
in the house of which her sister was concierge.

IV

Those people who look for the death of the Catholic religion in our day,
do not realize by what an infinite number of sturdy roots it still
retains its hold upon the hearts of the people. They do not realize the
secret, delicate fascination it has for the woman of the people. They do
not realize what confession and the confessor are to the impoverished
souls of those poor women. In the priest who listens and whose voice
falls softly on h