his final meal amidst the deep silence
of the old, black, deserted mansion. The buxom figure of Victorine was
still instinct with mourning, with grief for the loss of her dear
Contessina, but her daily toil was already setting her erect again,
restoring her quick activity; and she spoke almost cheerfully whilst
passing plates and dishes to Pierre. "And to think Monsieur l'Abbe," said
she, "that you'll be in Paris on the morning of the day after to-morrow!
As for me, you know, it seems as if I only left Auneau yesterday. Ah!
what fine soil there is there; rich soil yellow like gold, not like their
poor stuff here which smells of sulphur! And the pretty fresh willows
beside our stream, too, and the little wood so full of moss! They've no
moss here, their trees look like tin under that stupid sun of theirs
which burns up the grass. _Mon Dieu_! in the early times I would have
given I don't know what for a good fall of rain to soak me and wash away
all the dust. Ah! I shall never get used to their awful Rome. What a
country and what people!"

Pierre was quite enlivened by her stubborn fidelity to her own nook,
which after five and twenty years of absence still left her horrified
with that city of crude light and black vegetation, true daughter as she
was of a smiling and temperate clime which of a morning was steeped in
rosy mist. "But now that your young mistress is dead," said he, "what
keeps you here? Why don't you take the train with me?"

She looked at him in surprise: "Go off with you, go back to Auneau! Oh!
it's impossible, Monsieur l'Abbe. It would be too ungrateful to begin
with, for Donna Serafina is accustomed to me, and it would be bad on my
part to forsake her and his Eminence now that they are in trouble. And
besides, what could I do elsewhere? No, my little hole is here now."

"So you will never see Auneau again?"

"No, never, that's certain."

"And you don't mind being buried here, in their ground which smells of
sulphur?"

She burst into a frank laugh. "Oh!" she said, "I don't mind where I am
when I'm dead. One sleeps well everywhere. And it's funny that you should
be so anxious as to what there may be when one's dead. There's nothing,
I'm sure. That's what tranquillises me, to feel that it will be all over
and that I shall have a rest. The good God owes us that after we've
worked so hard. You know that I'm not devout, oh! dear no. Still that
doesn't prevent me from behaving properly, and, true as I s