h cost a few
centimes more or less according to the seasons.

It was summer. She went to the fields to see the men harvesting. The
brightness of the sunshine found an echo in her heart.

The autumn came. Her husband went out shooting. He started in the
morning with his two dogs Medor and Mirza. She remained alone, without
grieving, moreover, at Henry's absence. She was very fond of him,
but she did not miss him. When he returned home, her affection was
especially bestowed on the dogs. She took care of them every evening
with a mother's tenderness, caressed 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