ad she not
confessed her crime? had she not yielded, weak woman that she was, to
torture? The fault was entirely hers. She should have allowed her finger
nails to be torn out rather than such a word to be wrenched from her. In
short, if she could but see Phoebus once more, for a single minute,
only one word would be required, one look, in order to undeceive him,
to bring him back. She did not doubt it. She was astonished also at many
singular things, at the accident of Phoebus's presence on the day of the
penance, at the young girl with whom he had been. She was his sister, no
doubt. An unreasonable explanation, but she contented herself with it,
because she needed to believe that Phoebus still loved her, and loved
her alone. Had he not sworn it to her? What more was needed, simple and
credulous as she was? And then, in this matter, were not appearances
much more against her than against him? Accordingly, she waited. She
hoped.

Let us add that the church, that vast church, which surrounded her on
every side, which guarded her, which saved her, was itself a sovereign
tranquillizer. The solemn lines of that architecture, the religious
attitude of all the objects which surrounded the young girl, the serene
and pious thoughts which emanated, so to speak, from all the pores of
that stone, acted upon her without her being aware of it. The edifice
had also sounds fraught with such benediction and such majesty,
that they soothed this ailing soul. The monotonous chanting of the
celebrants, the responses of the people to the priest, sometimes
inarticulate, sometimes thunderous, the harmonious trembling of the
painted windows, the organ, bursting forth like a hundred trumpets, the
three belfries, humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra on
which bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending incessantly
from the voice of a throng to that of one bell, dulled her memory, her
imagination, her grief. The bells, in particular, lulled her. It was
something like a powerful magnetism which those vast instruments shed
over her in great waves.

Thus every sunrise found her more calm, breathing better, less pale. In
proportion as her inward wounds closed, her grace and beauty blossomed
once more on her countenance, but more thoughtful, more reposeful. Her
former character also returned to her, somewhat even of her gayety, her
pretty pout, her love for her goat, her love for singing, her modesty.
She took care to dress hersel