aressed them incessantly, gave them a thousand charming little names
which she had no idea of applying to her husband.

He invariably told her all about his sport. He described the places where
he found partridges, expressed his astonishment at not having caught any
hares in Joseph Ledentu's clever, or else appeared indignant at the
conduct of M. Lechapelier, of Havre, who always went along the edge of
his property to shoot the game that he, Henry de Parville, had started.

She replied: "Yes, indeed! it is not right," thinking of something else
all the while.

The winter came, the Norman winter, cold and rainy. The endless floods of
rain came down tin the slates of the great gabled roof, rising like a
knife blade toward the sky. The roads seemed like rivers of mud, the
country a plain of mud, and no sound could be heard save that of water
falling; no movement could be seen save the whirling flight of crows that
settled down like a cloud on a field and then hurried off again.

About four o'clock, the army of dark, flying creatures came and perched
in the tall beeches at the left of the chateau, emitting deafening cries.
During nearly an hour, they flew from tree top to tree top, seemed to be
fighting, croaked, and made a black disturbance in the gray branches. She
gazed at them each evening with a weight at her heart, so deeply was she
impressed by the lugubrious melancholy of the darkness falling on the
deserted country.

Then she rang for the lamp, and drew near the fire. She burned heaps of
wood without succeeding in warming the spacious apartments reeking with
humidity. She was cold all day long, everywhere, in the drawing-room, at
meals, in her own apartment. It seemed to her she was cold to the marrow
of her bones. Her husband only came in to dinner; he was always out
shooting, or else he was superintending sowing the seed, tilling the
soil, and all the work of the country.

He would come back jovial, and covered with mud, rubbing his hands as he
exclaimed:

"What wretched weather!"

Or else:

"A fire looks comfortable!"

Or sometimes:

"Well, how are you to-day? Are you in good spirits?"

He was happy, in good health, without desires, thinking of nothing save
this simple, healthy, and quiet life.

About December, when the snow had come, she suffered so much from the
icy-cold air of the chateau which seemed to have become chilled in
passing through the centuries just as human beings become chilled w