she asked:

"What is the matter with you, Rosalie?"

The maid answered as she always did:

"Nothing, madame," but her voice seemed to die away as she spoke.

Jeanne had left off thinking about her, when she suddenly noticed that
she could not hear the girl moving. She called: "Rosalie."

There was no answer. Then she thought that the maid must have gone
quietly out of the room without her hearing her, and she cried in a
louder tone: "Rosalie!" Again she received no answer, and she was just
stretching out her hand to ring the bell, when she heard a low moan
close beside her. She started up in terror.

Rosalie was sitting on the floor with her back against the bed, her legs
stretched stiffly out, her face livid, and her eyes staring straight
before her. Jeanne rushed to her side.

"Oh, Rosalie! What is the matter? what is it?" she asked in affright.

The maid did not answer a word, but fixed her wild eyes on her mistress
and gasped for breath, as if tortured by some excruciating pain. Then,
stiffening every muscle in her body, and stifling a cry of anguish
between her clenched teeth, she slipped down on her back, and all at
once, something stirred underneath her dress, which clung tightly round
her legs. Jeanne heard a strange, gushing noise, something like the
death-rattle of someone who is suffocating, and then came a long low
wail of pain; it was the first cry of suffering of a child entering the
world.

The sound came as a revelation to her, and, suddenly losing her head,
she rushed to the top of the stairs, crying:

"Julien! Julien!"

"What do you want?" he answered, from below.

She gasped out, "It's Rosalie who--who--" but before she could say any
more Julien was rushing up the stairs two at a time; he dashed into the
bedroom, raised the girl's clothes, and there lay a creased, shriveled,
hideous, little atom of humanity, feebly whining and trying to move its
limbs. He got up with an evil look on his face, and pushed his
distracted wife out of the room, saying:

"This is no place for you. Go away and send me Ludivine and old Simon."

Jeanne went down to the kitchen trembling all over, to deliver her
husband's message, and then afraid to go upstairs again, she went into
the drawing-room, where a fire was never lighted, now her parents were
away. Soon she saw Simon run out of the house, and come back five
minutes after with Widow Dentu, the village midwife. Next she heard a
noise on the stairs which