lighter than before, I walked away, glorying
in my meeting as in a victory over chance, over the thousand trifles,
the thousand blind agencies that incessantly keep us from what we seek
and from what unconsciously seeks us.

I could have laughed for joy; and it would have been sweet to me, when
I passed into the garden, to proclaim my glee aloud. But the peace of
things laid silence upon me. I slowly followed the paths, bordered with
marigolds and balsam, that lead to the house; and, when I passed under
the blinds, which a friend's hand had gently drawn for me, I heard my
everyday voice describing my discovery and my delight in sober tones.

And yet the moment of exaltation still charged my life; it seemed to me
clearer and deeper; and I thought that enthusiasm is in us like a
too-full cup, which overflows at the least movement of the soul.

4

I made enquiries that same evening; and all that I learnt encourages me.

She lives at the end of our village of Sainte-Colombe. She was brought
up at the convent in the town hard by and left it at the age of
eighteen. Since then, she has not been happy. On Sunday she is never
with the merrymaking crowd. She has never been seen at church. She
neither prays nor dances.

CHAPTER III

1

I took the road leading to the farm at which she lives. The yard is a
large one, the trees that hem it in are old and planted close together.
One can hardly see the straggling, thatched buildings from the road; and
I walked round the place without being able to satisfy my curiosity. She
lives there, I was told, with an old woman, her godmother, about whom
the people of the countryside tell stories of murder and debauchery. I
have seen her sometimes. She gives a disagreeable impression. She is a
tall, lean woman, with wisps of white hair straggling about her face.
Her waving arms and twitching hands carry a perpetual vague menace. The
black, deep-set eyes gleam evilly in her ivory face; and her hard thin
mouth, which opens straight across it, often hums coarse ditties in a
cracked voice.

Her curious attire completes the disorder of her appearance. Over her
rough peasant's clothes, some article of cast-off apparel cuts a strange
and lamentable figure: a muslin morning-wrap, once white and covered
with filmy lace; long, faded ribbons, which fasten a showy Watteau pleat
to the back, with ravelled ends spreading over the thick red-cotton
skirt; old pink-satin slippers, with pointed