which she was taking care of for her son, and wished to give back to him
in perfect condition on the day when, rich enough and tired of living
with the Turks, he would come, according to his promise, to live with
her beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Then, too, what universal and indefatigable supervision! Through the
mists of early morning the farm-servants heard her rough and husky
voice: "Olivier, Peyrol, Audibert. Come on! It is four o'clock." Then
she would hasten to the immense kitchen, where the maids, heavy with
sleep, were heating the porridge over the crackling, new-lit fire.
They gave her a little dish of red Marseilles-ware full of boiled
chestnuts--frugal breakfast of bygone times, which nothing would have
induced her to change. At once she was off, hurrying with great strides,
her large silver keyring at her belt, whence jingled all her keys, her
plate in her hand, balanced by the distaff which she held, in working
order, under her arm, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even
to eat her chestnuts. On the way, a glance at the stables, still dark,
where the animals were moving duly, at the stifling pens with their rows
of impatient and outstretched muzzles; and the first glimmers of light
creeping over the layers of stones that supported the embankment of the
park, lit up the figure of the old woman, running in the dew, with the
lightness of a girl, despite her seventy years--verifying exactly each
morning all the wealth of the domain, anxious to make sure that the
night had not taken away the statues and the vases, uprooted the
hundred-year-old quincunx, dried up the springs which filtered into
their resounding basins. Then the full sunlight of midday, humming and
vibrating, showed still, on the sand of an alley, against the white wall
of a terrace, the long figure of the old woman, elegant and straight
as her spindle, picking up bits of dead wood, breaking off some uneven
branch of a shrub, careless of the shock it caused her and the sweat
which broke out over her skin. Towards this hour another figure was to
be seen in the park also--less active, less noisy, dragging rather than
walking, leaning against the walls and railings--a poor round-shouldered
being, shaky and stiff, a figure from which life seemed to have gone
out, never speaking, when he was tired giving a little plaintive cry
towards the servant, who was always near, who helped him to sit down, to
crouch upon some step, where he would