d worked so late as to endanger her eyesight. But how
else could she have lived? Her widow's pension--five hundred francs
per annum--barely sufficed for the needs of her child. For five years
Christine had seen her mother grow thinner and paler, wasting away a
little bit each day until she became a mere shadow. And now she felt
remorseful at not having been more obedient, at having driven her
mother to despair by lack of application. She had begun each week with
magnificent intentions, promising that she would soon help her to earn
money; but her arms and legs got the fidgets, in spite of her efforts;
the moment she became quiet she fell ill. Then one morning her mother
had been unable to get up, and had died; her voice too weak to make
itself heard, her eyes full of big tears. Ever did Christine behold her
thus dead, with her weeping eyes wide open and fixed on her.

At other times, Christine, when questioned by Claude about Clermont,
forgot those sorrows to recall more cheerful memories. She laughed
gaily at the idea of their encampment, as she called it, in the Rue
de l'Eclache; she born in Strasburg, her father a Gascon, her mother a
Parisian, and all three thrown into that nook of Auvergne, which they
detested. The Rue de l'Eclache, sloping down to the Botanical Gardens,
was narrow and dank, gloomy, like a vault. Not a shop, never a
passer-by--nothing but melancholy frontages, with shutters always
closed. At the back, however, their windows, overlooking some
courtyards, were turned to the full sunlight. The dining-room opened
even on to a spacious balcony, a kind of wooden gallery, whose arcades
were hung with a giant wistaria which almost smothered them with
foliage. And the girl had grown up there, at first near her invalid
father, then cloistered, as it were, with her mother, whom the least
exertion exhausted. She had remained so complete a stranger to the town
and its neighbourhood, that Claude and herself burst into laughter when
she met his inquiries with the constant answer, 'I don't know.' The
mountains? Yes, there were mountains on one side, they could be seen
at the end of the streets; while on the other side of the town, after
passing along other streets, there were flat fields stretching far away;
but she never went there, the distance was too great. The only height
she remembered was the Puy de Dome, rounded off at the summit like a
hump. In the town itself she could have found her way to the cathedral