The light in the room was the light of an evening in early spring, about five o’clock, a light as clear as crystal and as white as silver, the cold, chaste, soft light, which fades away in the flush of the sunset passing into twilight. The sky was filled with that light of a new life, adorably melancholy, like the still naked earth, and so replete with pathos that it moves happy souls to tears.
“Well, well! my silly Germinie, weeping?” said the old woman, a moment later, withdrawing her hands which were moist with her maid’s kisses.
“Oh! my dear, kind mademoiselle, I would like to weep like this all the time! it’s so good! it brings my poor mother back before my eyes—and everything!—if you only knew!”
“Go on, go on,” said her mistress, closing her eyes to listen, “tell me about it.”
“Oh! my poor mother!” The maid paused a moment. Then, with the flood of words that gushes forth with tears of joy, she continued, as if, in the emotion and outpouring of her happiness, her whole childhood flowed back into her heart! “Poor woman! I can see her now the last time she went out to take me to mass, one 21st of January, I remember. In those days they read from the king’s Testament. Ah! she suffered enough on my account, did mamma! She was forty-two years old, when I was born—papa made her cry a good deal! There were three of us before and there wasn’t any too much bread in the house. And then he was proud as anything. If we’d had only a handful of peas in the house he would never have gone to the curé for help. Ah! we didn’t eat bacon every day at our house. Never mind; for all that mamma loved me a little more and she always found a little fat or cheese in some corner to put on my bread. I wasn’t five when she died. That was a bad thing for us all. I had a tall brother, who was white as a sheet, with a yellow beard—and good! you have no idea. Everybody loved him. They gave him all sorts of names. Some called him Boda—why, I don’t know. Others called him Jesus Christ. Ah! he was a worker, he was! It didn’t make any difference to him that his health was good for nothing; at daybreak he was always at his loom—for we were weavers, you must know—and he never put his shuttle down till night. And honest, too, if you knew! People came from all about to bring him their yarn, and without weighing it, too. He was a great friend of the schoolmaster, and he used to write the mottoes for the carnival. My father, he was a different sort: he’d work for a moment, or an hour, you know, and then he’d go off into the fields—and when he came home he’d beat us, and beat us hard. He was like a madman; they said it was because he was consumptive. It was lucky my brother was there: he used to prevent my second sister from pulling my hair and hurting me, because she was jealous. He always took me by the hand to go and see them play skittles. In fact, he supported the family all alone. For my first communion he had the bells rung! Ah! he did a heap of work so that I should be like the others, in a little white dress with flounces and a little bag in my hand, such as they used to carry in those days. I didn’t have any cap: I remember making myself a pretty little wreath of ribbons and the white pith you pull off when you strip reeds; there was lots of it in the places where we used to put the hemp to soak. That was one of my great days—that and the drawing lots for the pigs at Christmas—and the days when I went to help them tie up the vines; that was in June, you know. We had a little vineyard near Saint Hilaire. There was one very hard year in those days—do you remember it, mademoiselle?—the long frost of 1828 that ruined everything. It extended as far as Dijon and farther, too—people had to make bread from bran. My brother nearly killed himself with work. Father, who was always out of doors tramping about the fields, sometimes brought home a few mushrooms. It was pretty bad, all the same; we were hungry oftener than anything else. When I was out in the fields myself, I’d look around to see if anyone could see me, and then I’d crawl along softly on my knees, and when I was under a cow, I’d take off one of my sabots and begin to milk her. Bless me! I came near being caught at it! My oldest sister was out at service with the Mayor of Lenclos, and she sent home her wages—twenty-four francs—it was always as much as that. The second worked at dressmaking in bourgeois families; but they didn’t pay the prices then that they do today; she worked from six in the morning till dark for eight sous. Out of that she wanted to put some by for a dress for the fête on Saint-Remi’s day.—Ah! that’s the way it is with us: there are many who live on two potatoes a day for six months so as to have a new dress for that day. Bad luck fell on us on all sides. My father died. We had to sell a small field, and a bit of a vineyard that yielded a cask of wine every year. The notaries don’t work for nothing. When
