re's sheep is drawn and flat too." That made Eugene laugh. He
said I was only a second-hand shepherdess, and explained to me that
sheep were "drawn" when their stomachs were swollen.

Two days afterwards Pauline told me that she and Master Silvain saw
that they would never make a good shepherdess of me, and that they were
going to give me work to do in the house. Old Bibiche was not good for
much, and Pauline could not do everything herself because of her baby.
When they told me this, my first thought was that I should be able to
go up to the garret more often, and I kissed Pauline and thanked her.

So I became a farm servant. I had to kill the chickens and the
rabbits. I hated doing it, and Pauline could never understand why.
She said I was like Eugene, who ran away when a pig was being killed.
However, I wanted to try and kill a chicken so as to show that I did my
best. I took it into the granary. It struggled in my hands, and the
straw all round me got red. Then it became quite still, and I put it
down for Bibiche to come and pluck it. But when she came she cackled
with laughter because the chicken had got on to its feet again, and was
in the middle of a basket of corn. It was eating greedily, as though
it wanted to get well as quickly as possible after the way in which I
had hurt it. Bibiche got hold of it, and when she had passed the blade
of her knife across its neck the straw was much redder than it had been
before.

Instead of going to sleep in the middle of the day, I used to go up to
the garret to read. I opened the book anywhere, and every time I read
it over again I found something new in it. I loved this book of mine.
For me it was like a young prisoner whom I went to visit secretly. I
used to imagine that it was dressed like a page, and that it waited for
me on the black rafter. One evening I went on a lovely journey with
it. I had closed the book, and was leaning on my elbows and looking
out of the skylight in the garret. It was almost evening, and the pine
trees looked less green. The sun was pushing its way into the white
clouds which hollowed themselves and then swelled out again, like down
and feathers do when you push something into a sackful of them.

Without quite knowing how, I found myself, all of a sudden, flying over
a wood with Telemachus. He held me by the hand, and our heads touched
the blue of the sky. Telemachus said nothing, but I knew that we were
going up in