her name her seducer, but each
time she ran away, without saying anything. Julien suddenly became
better tempered, and his young wife began to cherish vague hopes, and to
regain a little of her former gayety; but she often felt very unwell,
though she never said anything about it.

For five weeks the crisp, shining snow had lain on the frozen ground; in
the daytime there was not a cloud to be seen, and at night the sky was
strewn with stars. Standing alone in their square courtyards, behind the
great frosted trees, the farms seemed dead beneath their snowy shrouds.
Neither men nor cattle could go out, and the only sign of life about the
homesteads and cottages was the smoke that went straight up from the
chimneys into the frosty air.

The grass, the hedges and the wall of elms seemed killed by the cold.
From time to time the trees cracked, as if the fibers of their branches
were separating beneath the bark, and sometimes a big branch would break
off and fall to the ground, its sap frozen and dried up by the intense
cold.

Jeanne thought the severe weather was the cause of her ill-health, and
she longed for the warm spring breezes. Sometimes the very idea of food
disgusted her, and she could eat nothing; at other times she vomited
after every meal, unable to digest the little she did eat. She had
violent palpitations of the heart, and she lived in a constant and
intolerable state of nervous excitement.

One evening, when the thermometer was sinking still lower, Julien
shivered as he left the dinner table (for the dining-room was never
sufficiently heated, so careful was he over the wood), and rubbing his
hands together:

"It's too cold to sleep alone to-night, isn't it, darling?" he whispered
to his wife, with one of his old good-tempered laughs.

Jeanne threw her arms round his neck, but she felt so ill, so nervous,
and she had such aching pains that evening, that, with her lips close to
his, she begged him to let her sleep alone.

"I feel so ill to-night," she said, "but I am sure to be better
to-morrow."

"Just as you please, my dear," he answered. "If you are ill, you must
take care of yourself." And he began to talk of something else.

Jeanne went to bed early. Julien, for a wonder, ordered a fire to be
lighted in his own room; and when the servant came to tell him that "the
fire had burnt up," he kissed his wife on the forehead and said
good-night.

The very walls seemed to feel the cold, and made lit