o resist or to say _no_. I did not even ask the man who
seduced me to marry me, to promise me what men do promise girls. We met
in a booth at the fair, and I used to go to meet him every evening in a
meadow bordered by poplar trees. He had a situation as clerk or
collector, I believe, and when he was sent to another town, I was
already three months in the family way. My people soon found it out, and
forced me to acknowledge everything, and they locked me up like a
prisoner who wished to escape from jail.

"My brother was home for his holidays--do you remember now, Monsieur
Parisel? He had just been appointed second head clerk, was reckoning on
still further speedy advancement, and was bursting with pride. He was
harder and more inexorable than the two old people towards me, poor
forsaken girl as I was, although they had never left their home. He
spoke about his future, which would be compromised, of the disgrace
which would fall on all the family, went into a rage, arid pitied
neither my tears nor my prayers, and treated me with the cruelty of a
hangman.

"And they sent me a long way off, like a servant who has committed a
theft, and condemned me to be confined at a farm in a village, where the
peasants treated me harshly. The child died, but the mother lived
through everything.

"One does not have good luck very frequently, confound it, and the only
thing that I could do was to return evil, to strike at the coward whom I
hated, to dishonor and to lower his name, to stick to the fellow who
strutted about in his uniform, and who had won the game, from garrison
to garrison, as if I had been vermin. That is why I, of my own accord,
came to this house, where one belongs to everybody, and have become
almost more vicious than any of the other girls, and why I have told you
this unentertaining story.

"I say, you fellows, who will pay ten francs for the bandmaster's
sister? Upon my honor, you will not regret your money!"

His comrades got Parisel out of the house. He resisted for a week, but
then sold everything he had, borrowed the money to pay Lucie's debts,
and tried in vain to free himself from that weight, and to get her
expelled from the town, but she always returned. She was as implacable
towards him as a gerfalcon that is devouring its prey, and as the
adventure had got wind, and was even talked about at the soldiers' mess,
and as the scandal increased every day, the colonel forced the
bandmaster to resign.

Wh