that by birth we
were not very far apart in rank: Amante was the daughter of a Norman
farmer, I of a German miller; and besides that, my life was so lonely!
It almost seemed as if I could not please my husband. He had written
for some one capable of being my companion at times, and now he was
jealous of my free regard for her--angry because I could sometimes
laugh at her original tunes and amusing proverbs, while when with him I
was too much frightened to smile.

From time to time families from a distance of some leagues drove
through the bad roads in their heavy carriages to pay us a visit, and
there was an occasional talk of our going to Paris when public affairs
should be a little more settled. These little events and plans were the
only variations in my life for the first twelve months, if I except the
alternations in M. de la Tourelle's temper, his unreasonable anger, and
his passionate fondness.

Perhaps one of the reasons that made me take pleasure and comfort in
Amante's society was, that whereas I was afraid of everybody (I do not
think I was half as much afraid of things as of persons), Amante feared
no one. She would quietly beard Lefebvre, and he respected her all the
more for it; she had a knack of putting questions to M. de la Tourelle,
which respectfully informed him that she had detected the weak point,
but forebore to press him too closely upon it out of deference to his
position as her master. And with all her shrewdness to others, she had
quite tender ways with me; all the more so at this time because she
knew, what I had not yet ventured to tell M. de la Tourelle, that
by-and-by I might become a mother--that wonderful object of mysterious
interest to single women, who no longer hope to enjoy such blessedness
themselves.

It was once more autumn; late in October. But I was reconciled to my
habitation; the walls of the new part of the building no longer looked
bare and desolate; the _debris_ had been so far cleared away by M. de
la Tourelle's desire as to make me a little flower-garden, in which I
tried to cultivate those plants that I remembered as growing at home.
Amante and I had moved the furniture in the rooms, and adjusted it to
our liking; my husband had ordered many an article from time to time
that he thought would give me pleasure, and I was becoming tame to my
apparent imprisonment in a certain part of the great building, the
whole of which I had never yet explored. It was October, as I s