ormenting her with the dear little
digits that seem to grope in the dark for a mother's features: it was as
if her child's life and warmth were wandering over her face. From time
to time she would bestow half of her smile on Jupillon over the little
one's head, and would call to him: "Do look at her!"

Then the child would fall asleep with the open mouth that laughs in
sleep. Germinie would lean over her and listen to her breathing in
repose. And, soothed by the peaceful respiration, she would gradually
forget herself as she gazed dreamily at the poor abode of her happiness,
the rustic garden, the apple-trees with their leaves covered with little
yellow snails and the red-cheeked apples on the southern limbs, the
poles, at whose feet the beanstalks, twisted and parched, were beginning
to climb, the square of cabbages, the four sunflowers in the little
circle in the centre of the path; and, close beside her, on the edge of
the stream, the patches of grass covered with dog's mercury, the white
heads of the nettles against the wall, the washerwomen's boxes, the
bottles of lye and the bundle of straw scattered about by the antics of
a puppy just out of the water. She gazed and dreamed. She thought of the
past, having her future on her knees. With the grass and the trees and
the river that were before her eyes, she reconstructed, in memory, the
rustic garden of her rustic childhood. She saw again the two stones
reaching down to the water, from which her mother, when she was a little
child, used to wash her feet before putting her to bed in summertime.

"Look you, Pere Remalard," said Jupillon from his board, on one of the
hottest days in August, to the peasant who was watching him,--"do you
know they won't bite at the red worm worth a sou?"

"You must try the gentle," rejoined the peasant sententiously.

"All right, I'll have my revenge with the gentle! Pere Remalard, you
must get some calf's lights Thursday. You hang 'em up in that tree, and
Sunday we'll see."

On the Sunday Jupillon had miraculous success with his fishing, and
Germinie heard the first syllable issue from her daughter's mouth.

XXII

On Wednesday morning, when she came downstairs, Germinie found a letter
for herself. In that letter, written on the back of a laundry receipt,
the Remalard woman informed her that her child had fallen sick almost
immediately after her departure; that she had grown steadily worse; that
she had consulted the doctor