that vexed me. … I haven’t a father, or mother, or brother, or sister, no one. I felt as if he was a brother who’d come back when he began talking to me. And then he asked me to go down to the river bank with him one evening, so we could talk without being heard. I went. I did. … How did I know what I was doing? How did I know what I did after that? He put his arm round me. … I’m sure I didn’t want to … no … no. … I couldn’t. … I wanted to cry, it was such a lovely night … the moon was shining. … I couldn’t … he did what he wanted. … It went on like that for three weeks, as long as he stayed. … I would have followed him to the end of the world … he went away. … I didn’t know I was going to have a baby, I didn’t … I didn’t know until a month after.”
She broke into such a passion of weeping that they had to give her time to control herself again.
Then the president spoke to her like a priest in the confessional: “Come now, tell us everything.”
She went on with her tale:
“When I saw I was pregnant, I went and told Madame Boudin, the midwife, who’s there to tell you I did, and I asked her what I ought to do supposing it happened when she wasn’t there. And then I made all the little clothes, night after night, until one o’clock in the morning, every night; and then I looked out for another place, for I knew quite well I’d be dismissed, but I wanted to stay in the house up to the very last, to save my bit of money, seeing I hardly had any and I had to have all I could, for the little baby. …”
“So you didn’t want to kill it?”
“Oh, for sure I didn’t, sir.”
“Then why did you kill it?”
“It’s like this. It happened sooner than I’d have believed. The pains took me in my kitchen, as I was finishing my washing up.
“Monsieur and Madame Varambot were already asleep; so I went upstairs, not without pain, dragging myself from step to step. And I lay down on the floor, on the boards, so I shouldn’t soil my bed. It lasted maybe an hour, maybe two, maybe three—I don’t know, it hurt me so dreadful; and then I pressed down with all my strength, I felt him coming out, and I gathered him up.
“Oh, I was so pleased, I was. I did everything that Madame Boudin had told me, everything. And then I put him on my bed. And then, if I hadn’t another pain, a mortal pain! If you knew what it was like, you men, you’d think a bit more about doing it, you would. I fell on my knees, then on my back, on the floor; and I had it all over again, maybe another hour, maybe two, all by myself, there … and then another one came out … another little baby … two—yes, two … think of it! I took him up like the first and laid him on the bed, side by side … two. Could I do with it now? Two children. Me that earns a pound a month. Tell me … could I do with it? One, yes, could be managed, with scraping and saving, but not two. It turned my head. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t. How do you think I could choose one?
“I didn’t know what I was doing! I thought my last hour had come. I put the pillow over them, without knowing what I was doing. … I couldn’t keep two … and I lay down again on top of it. And then I stayed there tossing and crying until I saw the light coming in at the window; they were dead under the pillow for sure. Then I took them under my arm, I got down the stairs, I went out into the kitchen garden, I took the garden spade, and I buried them in the ground, as deep as I could, one in one place, the other in another, not together, so that they couldn’t speak about their mother, if little dead babies can speak. I don’t know about it, I don’t.
“And then I was so ill in my bed that I couldn’t get up. They fetched the doctor and he knew all about it. It’s the truth, your worship. Do what you like, I’m ready.”
Half the jury were blowing their noses violently, to keep back their tears. Women were sobbing in the court.
The president questioned her.
“Where did you bury the other one?”
“Which did you find?” she asked.
“Well … the one … the one who was in the artichokes.”
“Oh, well. The other one is among the strawberries—at the edge of the well.”
And she began to sob so dreadfully that her moans were heartbreaking to hear.
The girl Rosalie Prudent was acquitted.
Madame Parisse
I
I was sitting on the breakwater of the little harbour of Obernon, near the small town of la Salis, watching Antibes in the setting sun. I have never seen anything so startling or so lovely.
The little town, shut within the heavy ramparts built by M. de Vauban, thrusts out into the sea, in the centre of the wide bay of Nice. The great waves of the open sea run in and break at its feet, wreathing her with flowers of foam; and above the ramparts, the houses climb on each other’s shoulders up to the two towers lifting to the sky like the two horns of an old helmet. And these two towers are sharply outlined on the milky whiteness of the Alps, on the vast and far-off wall of snow that bars the whole horizon.
Between the white foam below the walls and the white snow on the rim of the sky the little town stands like a brilliant flower against the deep blue of the nearest hills, and lifts to the rays of
