liberty that cares nothing for opinion? May
they not be adventurers, these two women with their little house, their
prudence, and their caution, which enable them to impose on people so
easily? Assuredly, for all I know, I have fallen into an affair of
gallantry when I thought I was engaged in a romance. But what can I do?
There is no one here who can help me except the priest, who does not care
to tell me what he knows, and his uncle, who will say still less. Who
will save me? How can I learn the truth?

Thus spoke jealousy; thus, forgetting so many tears and all that I had
suffered, I had come at the end of two days to a point where I was
tormenting myself with the idea that Brigitte had yielded too easily.
Thus, like all who doubt, I brushed aside sentiment and reason to dispute
with facts, to attach myself to the letter and dissect my love.

While absorbed in these reflections I was slowly approaching Madame
Pierson's.

I found the gate open, and as I entered the garden I saw a light in the
kitchen. I thought of questioning the servant, I stepped to the window.

A feeling of horror rooted me to the spot. The servant was an old woman,
thin and wrinkled and bent, a common deformity in people who have worked
in the fields. I found her shaking a cooking utensil over a filthy sink.
A dirty candle fluttered in her trembling hand; about her were pots,
kettles, and dishes, the remains of dinner that a dog sniffed at, from
time to time, as though ashamed; a warm, nauseating odor emanated from
the reeking walls. When the old woman caught sight of me, she smiled in a
confidential way; she had seen me take leave of her mistress.

I shuddered as I thought what I had come to seek in a spot so well suited
to my ignoble purpose. I fled from that old woman as from jealousy
personified, and as if the stench of her cooking had come from my heart.

Brigitte was at the window watering her well-beloved flowers; a child of
one of her neighbors was lying in a cradle at her side, and she was
gently rocking the cradle with her disengaged hand; the child's mouth was
full of bonbons, and in gurgling eloquence it was addressing an
incomprehensible apostrophe to its nurse. I sat down near her and kissed
the child on its fat cheeks, as if to imbibe some of its innocence.
Brigitte accorded me a timid greeting; she could see her troubled image
in my eyes. For my part I avoided her glance; the more I admired her
beauty and her air of candor, th