ch she had appeared to be living lately,
and which had so pleased the comte.

She pulled up her horse for she wanted to think calmly, and the quick
movement confused her ideas. After the first shock she became almost
indifferent; she felt neither jealousy nor hatred, only contempt. She
did not think about Julien at all, for nothing that he could do would
have astonished her, but the twofold treachery of the comtesse, who had
deceived her friend as well as her husband, hurt her deeply. So everyone
was treacherous, and untrue and faithless! Her eyes filled with tears,
for sometimes it is as bitter to see an illusion destroyed as to witness
the death of a friend. She resolved to say nothing more about her
discovery. Her heart would be dead to everyone but Paul and her parents,
but she would bear a smiling face.

When she reached home she caught up her son in her arms, carried him to
her room and pressed her lips to his face again and again, and for a
whole hour she played with and caressed him.

Julien came in to dinner in a very good temper and full of plans for his
wife's pleasure.

"Won't your father and mother come and stay with us this year?" he said.

Jeanne almost forgave him his infidelity, so grateful was she to him for
making this proposal. She longed to see the two people she loved best
after Paul, and she passed the whole evening in writing to them, and
urging them to come as soon as possible.

They wrote to say they would come on the twentieth of May; it was then
the seventh, and Jeanne awaited their arrival with intense impatience.
Besides her natural desire to see her parents, she felt it would be such
a relief to have near her two honest hearts, two simple-minded beings
whose life and every action, thought and desire had always been upright
and pure. She felt she stood alone in her honesty among all this guilt.
She had learnt to dissimulate her feelings, to meet the comtesse with an
outstretched hand and a smiling face, but her sense of desolation
increased with her contempt for her fellow-men.

Every day some village scandal reached her ears which filled her with
still greater disgust and scorn for human frailty. The Couillards'
daughter had just had a child and was therefore going to be married. The
Martins' servant, who was an orphan, a little girl only fifteen years
old, who lived near, and a widow, a lame, poverty-stricken woman who was
so horribly dirty that she had been nicknamed La Crotte, we