row against the white wainscoting.
An old piano, standing beneath a barometer, was covered with a
pyramid of old books and boxes. On either side of the yellow marble
mantelpiece, in Louis XV style, stood a tapestry armchair. The clock
represented a temple of Vesta; and the whole room smelled musty, as
it was on a lower level than the garden.

On the first floor was Madame's bedchamber, a large room papered
in a flowered design and containing the portrait of Monsieur
dressed in the costume of a dandy. It communicated with a smaller
room, in which there were two little cribs, without any
mattresses. Next, came the parlour (always closed), filled with
furniture covered with sheets. Then a hall, which led to the
study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves of a
book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk. Two
panels were entirely hidden under pen-and-ink sketches, Gouache
landscapes and Audran engravings, relics of better times and
vanished luxury. On the second floor, a garret-window lighted
Felicite's room, which looked out upon the meadows.

She arose at daybreak, in order to attend mass, and she worked
without interruption until night; then, when dinner was over, the
dishes cleared away and the door securely locked, she would bury
the log under the ashes and fall asleep in front of the hearth
with a rosary in her hand. Nobody could bargain with greater
obstinacy, and as for cleanliness, the lustre on her brass
saucepans was the envy and despair of other servants. She was most
economical, and when she ate she would gather up crumbs with the
tip of her finger, so that nothing should be wasted of the loaf of
bread weighing twelve pounds which was baked especially for her
and lasted three weeks.

Summer and winter she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back
with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey
stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn by hospital
nurses.

Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five,
she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell
her age; erect and silent always, she resembled a wooden figure
working automatically.

CHAPTER II

THE HEROINE

Like every other woman, she had had an affair of the heart. Her
father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding.
Then her mother died and her sisters went their different ways; a
farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, l