on by the innate
love of one's birthplace and of spots familiar from childhood, by all
the sensations and recollections once more renewed, by all the objects
of yore seen again once more; by trifles, such as the mark of a knife on
a door, a broken chair recalling some pretty event, the smell of the
soil, the breath of the neighboring forest, the odors of the dwelling,
the gutter, the dunghill.

Mother Duroy did not speak, but remained sad and grim, watching her
daughter-in-law out of the corner of her eye, with hatred awakened in
her heart--the hatred of an old toiler, an old rustic with fingers worn
and limbs bent by hard work--for the city madame, who inspired her with
the repulsion of an accursed creature, an impure being, created for
idleness and sin. She kept getting up every moment to fetch the dishes
or fill the glasses with cider, sharp and yellow from the decanter, or
sweet, red, and frothing from the bottles, the corks of which popped
like those of ginger beer.

Madeleine scarcely ate or spoke. She wore her wonted smile upon her
lips, but it was a sad and resigned one. She was downcast. Why? She had
wanted to come. She had not been unaware that she was going among
country folk--poor country folk. What had she fancied them to be--she,
who did not usually dream? Did she know herself? Do not women always
hope for something that is not? Had she fancied them more poetical? No;
but perhaps better informed, more noble, more affectionate, more
ornamental. Yet she did not want them high-bred, like those in novels.
Whence came it, then, that they shocked her by a thousand trifling,
imperceptible details, by a thousand indefinable coarsenesses, by their
very nature as rustics, by their words, their gestures, and their mirth?
She recalled her own mother, of whom she never spoke to anyone--a
governess, brought up at Saint Denis--seduced, and died from poverty and
grief when she, Madeleine, was twelve years old. An unknown hand had had
her brought up. Her father, no doubt. Who was he? She did not exactly
know, although she had vague suspicions.

The lunch still dragged on. Customers were now coming in and shaking
hands with the father, uttering exclamations of wonderment on seeing his
son, and slyly winking as they scanned the young wife out of the corner
of their eye, which was as much as to say: "Hang it all, she's not a
duffer, George Duroy's wife." Others, less intimate, sat down at the
wooden tables, calling for "A