n secret with the bashfulness of a
young girl, without knowing how to fondle him. Sometimes she took him on
her knees, and gazed at him for a long time with her pale eyes. When
the little one, frightened by her mute white visage, began to cry, she
seemed perplexed by what she had done, and quickly put him down upon the
floor without even kissing him. Perhaps she recognised in him a faint
resemblance to Macquart the poacher.

Silvere grew up, ever tete-a-tete with Adelaide. With childish cajolery
he used to call her aunt Dide, a name which ultimately clung to the
old woman; the word "aunt" employed in this way is simply a term of
endearment in Provence. The child entertained singular affection, not
unmixed with respectful terror, for his grandmother. During her nervous
fits, when he was quite a little boy, he ran away from her, crying,
terrified by her disfigured countenance; and he came back very timidly
after the attack, ready to run away again, as though the old woman were
disposed to beat him. Later on, however, when he was twelve years old,
he would stop there bravely and watch in order that she might not hurt
herself by falling off the bed. He stood for hours holding her tightly
in his arms to subdue the rude shocks which distorted her. During
intervals of calmness he would gaze with pity on her convulsed features
and withered frame, over which her skirts lay like a shroud. These
hidden dramas, which recurred every month, this old woman as rigid as
a corpse, this child bent over her, silently watching for the return
of consciousness, made up amidst the darkness of the hovel a strange
picture of mournful horror and broken-hearted tenderness.

When aunt Dide came round, she would get up with difficulty, and set
about her work in the hovel without even questioning Silvere. She
remembered nothing, and the child, from a sort of instinctive prudence,
avoided the least allusion to what had taken place. These recurring
fits, more than anything else, strengthened Silvere's deep attachment
for his grandmother. In the same manner as she adored him without any
garrulous effusiveness, he felt a secret, almost bashful, affection for
her. While he was really very grateful to her for having taken him in
and brought him up, he could not help regarding her as an extraordinary
creature, a prey to some strange malady, whom he ought to pity and
respect. No doubt there was not sufficient life left in Adelaide; she
was too white and too