tely under the yoke. When she saw the wounds it
made on the neck of her victim, she took care of her as a thing of her
own, and Celeste entered upon happier days. Comparing the end with the
beginning, she even felt a sort of love for her torturer. To gain
some power of self-defence, to become something less a cipher in the
household, supported, unknown to herself, by her own means, the poor
helot had but a single chance, and that chance never came to her.

Celeste had no child. This barrenness, which, from month to month,
brought floods of tears from her eyes, was long the cause of Brigitte's
scorn; she reproached the poor woman bitterly for being fit for nothing,
not even to bear children. The old maid, who had longed to love her
brother's child as if it were her own, was unable, for years, to
reconcile herself to this irremediable sterility.

At the time when our history begins, namely, in 1840, Celeste, then
forty-six years old, had ceased to weep; she now had the certainty of
never being a mother. And here is a strange thing. After twenty-five
years of this life, in which victory had ended by first dulling and then
breaking its own knife, Brigitte loved Celeste as much as Celeste loved
Brigitte. Time, ease, and the perpetual rubbing of domestic life, had
worn off the angles and smoothed the asperities; Celeste's resignation
and lamb-like gentleness had brought, at last, a serene and peaceful
autumn. The two women were still further united by the one sentiment
that lay within them, namely, their adoration for the lucky and selfish
Thuillier.

Moreover, these two women, both childless, had each, like all women
who have vainly desired children, fallen in love with a child. This
fictitious motherhood, equal in strength to a real motherhood, needs an
explanation which will carry us to the very heart of our drama, and
will show the reason of the new occupation which Mademoiselle Thuillier
provided for her brother.

CHAPTER III. COLLEVILLE

Thuillier had entered the ministry of finance as supernumerary at the
same time as Colleville, who has been mentioned already as his intimate
friend. In opposition to the well-regulated, gloomy household of
Thuillier, social nature had provided that of Colleville; and if it
is impossible not to remark that this fortuitous contrast was scarcely
moral, we must add that, before deciding that point, it would be well
to wait for the end of this drama, unfortunately too true, for w