stacks, of olive-trees and vines stretching
out over the fields as far as the eye could see. In the great chateau
she would have fancied herself a prisoner in one of those enchanted
dwellings where sleep seizes you in the fulness of your joy and does
not leave you for a hundred years. Here at all events the peasant
woman, who had never been able to accustom herself to that colossal
fortune, which had come too late, from too great a distance and like a
thunderbolt, felt in touch with real life by virtue of the going and
coming of the laborers, the departure and return of the cattle, their
visits to the watering-place, all the details of pastoral life, which
awakened her with the familiar crowing of the roosters, the shrill
cries of the peacocks, and sent her down the winding staircase before
daybreak. She deemed herself simply a trustee of that magnificent
property, of which she had charge for her son's benefit, and which she
proposed to turn over to him in good condition on the day when,
considering himself wealthy enough and weary of living among the
_Turs_, he should come, as he had promised, and live with her
beneath the shade of Saint-Romans.

Imagine then her untiring, all-pervading watchfulness.

In the twilight of early dawn, the farm servants heard her hoarse,
husky voice:

"Olivier--Peyrol--Audibert--Come! It's four o'clock." Then a dive into
the huge kitchen, where the maids, heavy with sleep, were warming the
soup over the bright, crackling peat fire. They gave her her little
plate of red Marseille earthenware, filled with boiled chestnuts, the
frugal breakfast of an earlier time which nothing could induce her to
change. Off she went at once with long strides, the keys jingling on
the great silver key-ring fastened to her belt, her plate in her hand,
held in equilibrium by the distaff which she held under her arm as if
ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to
eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark,
where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling
cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and
the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that
supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running
through the dew with the agility of a girl, despite her seventy years,
verifying exactly each morning all the treasures of the estate, anxious
to ascertain whether the night had stolen the