lls the smile of the brilliant sunshine. All the shutters were
closed.

A bit of a dead branch fell on her dress. She raised her eyes. It came
from the plane-tree. She drew near the big tree with its smooth, pale
bark; she stroked it with her hand as if it had been an animal. Her
foot struck something in the grass--a fragment of rotten wood; it was
the last fragment of the very bench on which she had sat so often with
those of her own family about her; the very bench which had been seen
set in place on the very day that Julien had made his first visit.

She reached the double doors of the vestibule of the house, and she
had great trouble to open them; for the heavy, rusty key refused to
turn in the lock. At length the lock yielded with a heavy grinding of
its springs; and the door, a little obstinate itself, burst open with
a cloud of dust.

At once, and almost running, she went upstairs to her own room. She
could recognize it, hung as it was with a light new paper: but
throwing open a window, she looked out and stood motionless, stirred
even to the depth of her being at the sight of all that landscape, so
much beloved; the shrubs, the elm-trees, the flat reaches, and the sea
dotted with brown sails, motionless in the distance.

Then she began prowling about the great empty dwelling. She even stopt
to look at the discolorations on the walls; spots familiar to her
eyes. Once she stood before a little hole crusht in the plaster by the
baron; who had often amused himself, when he was young, with making
passages at arms, cane in hand, against the partition wall, when he
happened to be passing this spot.

She went down-stairs to the drawing-room. It was somber behind the
closed shutters: for some time she could not distinguish anything;
then her eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Little by little she
recognized the wide tapestries with their patterns of birds flitting
about. Two settees were set before the chimney as if people had just
quitted them; and the very odor of the room, an odor which it had
always kept--that old, vague, sweet odor belonging to some old
houses--entered Jeanne's very being, enwrapt her in souvenirs,
intoxicated her memory. She remained gasping, breathing in that breath
of the past, her eyes fixt upon those two chairs; for suddenly she
saw--as she had so often seen them--her father and her mother, sitting
there warming their feet by the fire. She started back terrified,
struck her back agai