will allow everything--everything."

She murmured with a supreme effort, "Even her--as long as you come back
to me."

He just touched her lips with his, drawing one arm around her to prevent
her from falling; and she kept murmuring, "Dear heart! dear love! how
handsome you are! My God! how handsome you are!"

Pecuchet, without moving an inch, his chin just touching the top of the
ditch, stared at them in breathless astonishment.

"Come, no swooning," said Gorju. "You'll only have me missing the coach.
A glorious bit of devilment is getting ready, and I'm in the swim; so
just give me ten sous to stand the conductor a drink."

She took five francs out of her purse. "You will soon give them back to
me. Have a little patience. He has been a good while paralysed. Think of
that! And, if you liked, we could go to the chapel of Croix-Janval, and
there, my love, I would swear before the Blessed Virgin to marry you as
soon as he is dead."

"Ah! he'll never die--that husband of yours."

Gorju had turned on his heel. She caught hold of him again, and clinging
to his shoulders:

"Let me go with you. I will be your servant. You want some one. But
don't go away! don't leave me! Death rather! Kill me!"

She crawled towards him on her knees, trying to seize his hands in order
to kiss them. Her cap fell off, then her comb, and her hair got
dishevelled. It was turning white around her ears, and, as she looked up
at him, sobbing bitterly, with red eyes and swollen lips, he got quite
exasperated, and pushed her back.

"Be off, old woman! Good evening."

When she had got up, she tore off the gold cross that hung round her
neck, and flinging it at him, cried:

"There, you ruffian!"

Gorju went off, lashing the leaves of the trees with his switch.

Madame Castillon ceased weeping. With fallen jaw and tear-dimmed eyes
she stood motionless, petrified with despair; no longer a being, but a
thing in ruins.

What he had just chanced upon was for Pecuchet like the discovery of a
new world--a world in which there were dazzling splendours, wild
blossomings, oceans, tempests, treasures, and abysses of infinite depth.
There was something about it that excited terror; but what of that? He
dreamed of love, desired to feel it as she felt it, to inspire it as he
inspired it.

However, he execrated Gorju, and could hardly keep from giving
information about him at the guard-house.

Pecuchet was mortified by the slim waist, the regular cu