-I want you to marry me,
as you promised." But he only laughed and replied: "Oh! if a man were to
marry all the girls with whom he has made a slip, he would have more than
enough to do."

Then she seized him by the throat, threw him or his back, so that he
could not get away from her, and, half strangling him, she shouted into
his face:

"I am enceinte, do you hear? I am enceinte!"

He gasped for breath, as he was almost choked, and so they remained, both
of them, motionless and without speaking, in the dark silence, which was
only broken by the noise made by a horse as he, pulled the hay out of the
manger and then slowly munched it.

When Jacques found that she was the stronger, he stammered out: "Very
well, I will marry you, as that is the case." But she did not believe his
promises. "It must be at once," she said. "You must have the banns put
up." "At once," he replied. "Swear solemnly that you will." He hesitated
for a few moments and then said: "I swear it, by Heaven!"

Then she released her grasp and went away without another word.

She had no chance of speaking to him for several days; and, as the stable
was now always locked at night, she was afraid to make any noise, for
fear of creating a scandal. One morning, however, she saw another man
come in at dinner time, and she said: "Has Jacques left?" "Yes;" the man
replied; "I have got his place."

This made her tremble so violently that she could not take the saucepan
off the fire; and later, when they were all at work, she went up into her
room and cried, burying her head in the bolster, so that she might not be
heard. During the day, however, she tried to obtain some information
without exciting any suspicion, but she was so overwhelmed by the
thoughts of her misfortune that she fancied that all the people whom she
asked laughed maliciously. All she learned, however, was that he had left
the neighborhood altogether.

PART II

Then a cloud of constant misery began for her. She worked mechanically,
without thinking of what she was doing, with one fixed idea in her head:

"Suppose people were to know."

This continual feeling made her so incapable of reasoning that she did
not even try to think of any means of avoiding the disgrace that she knew
must ensue, which was irreparable and drawing nearer every day, and which
was as sure as death itself. She got up every morning long before the
others and persistently tried to look at her figure in a pie