their mutual caresses: but
they ate the whole loaf without obtaining any results from it.

Next, a schoolmaster unveiled mysteries, and processes of love which
were unknown in the country, but, infallible, so he declared; but none
of them had the desired effect. Then the priest advised them to make a
pilgrimage to the shrine at Fecamp. Rose went with the crowd and
prostrated herself in the abbey, and mingling her prayers with the
coarse wishes of the peasants around her, she prayed that she might be
fruitful a second time; but it was in vain, and then she thought that
she was being punished for her first fault, and she was seized by
terrible grief. She was wasting away with sorrow; her husband was also
aging prematurely, and was wearing himself out in useless hopes.

Then war broke out between them; he called her names and beat her. They
quarreled all day long, and when they were in bed together at night he
flung insults and obscenities at her, panting with rage, until one
night, not being able to think of any means of making her suffer more,
he ordered her to get up and go and stand out of doors in the rain,
until daylight. As she did not obey him, he seized her by the neck, and
began to strike her in the face with his fists, but she said nothing,
and did not move. In his exasperation he knelt on her stomach, and with
clenched teeth, and mad with rage, he began to beat her. Then in her
despair she rebelled, and flinging him against the wall with a furious
gesture, she sat up, and in an altered voice, she hissed: "I have had a
child, I have had one! I had it by Jacques; you know Jacques well. He
promised to marry me, but he left this neighborhood without keeping his
word."

The man was thunderstruck, and could hardly speak, but at last he
stammered out: "What are you saying? What are you saying?" Then she
began to sob, and amidst her tears she said: "That was the reason why I
did not want to marry you. I could never tell you, for you would have
left me without any bread for my child. You have never had any children,
so you cannot understand, you cannot understand!"

He said again, mechanically, with increasing surprise: "You have a
child? You have a child?" "You had me by force, as I suppose you know?
I did not want to marry you," she said, still sobbing.

Then he got up, lit the candle, and began to walk up and down, with his
arms behind him. She was cowering on the bed and crying, and suddenly he
stopped in front