She had no chance of speaking to him for several days, and as the stable was now always locked at night, she was afraid to make any noise, for fear of creating a scandal. One morning, however, she saw another man come in at dinnertime, and so she said: “Has Jacques left?” “Yes,” the man replied; “I have taken his place.”
This made her tremble so violently that she could not unhook the pot; and later when they were all at work, she went up into her room and cried, burying her head in her bolster, so that she might not be heard. During the day, however, she tried to obtain some information without exciting any suspicions, but she was so overwhelmed by the thoughts of her misfortune, that she fancied that all the people whom she asked, laughed maliciously. All she learned, however, was, that he had left the neighbourhood altogether.
Part II
Then a life of constant misery began for her. She worked mechanically, without thinking of what she was doing, with one fixed idea in her head: “Suppose people were to know.”
This continual feeling made her so incapable of reasoning, that she did not even try to think of any means of avoiding the disgrace that she knew must ensue, which was irreparable, and drawing nearer every day, and which was as sure as death itself. She got up every morning long before the others, and persistently tried to look at her figure in a piece of broken looking-glass at which she did her hair, as she was very anxious to know whether anybody would notice a change in her, and during the day she stopped working every few minutes to look at herself from top to toe, to see whether the size of her stomach did not make her apron look too short.
The months went on, and she scarcely spoke now, and when she was asked a question, she did not appear to understand, but she had a frightened look, with haggard eyes and trembling hands, which made her master say to her occasionally: “My poor girl, how stupid you have grown lately.”
In church, she hid behind a pillar, and no longer ventured to go to confession, as she feared to face the priest, to whom she attributed superhuman powers, which enabled him to read people’s consciences; and at meal times the looks of her fellow servants almost made her faint with mental agony, and she was always fancying that she had been found out by the cowherd, a precocious and cunning little lad, whose bright eyes seemed always to be watching her.
One morning the postman brought her a letter, and as she had never received one in her life before, she was so upset by it that she was obliged to sit down. Perhaps it was from him? But as she could not read, she sat anxious and trembling, with that piece of paper covered with ink in her hand; after a time, however, she put it into her pocket, as she did not venture to confide her secret to anyone. She often stopped in her work to look at those lines written at regular intervals, and which terminated in a signature, imagining vaguely that she would suddenly discover their meaning, until at last, as she felt half mad with impatience and anxiety, she went to the schoolmaster, who told her to sit down, and read to her, as follows:
“My Dear Daughter: This is to tell you that I am very ill. Our neighbour, Monsieur Dentu, has written this letter to ask you to come, if you can. For your affectionate mother,
She did not say a word, and went away, but as soon as she was alone, her legs gave way, and she fell down by the roadside, and remained there till night.
When she got back, she told the farmer her trouble, who allowed her to go home for as long as she wanted, and promised to have her work done by a charwoman, and to take her back when she returned.
Her mother was dying and breathed her last the day she arrived, and the next day Rose gave birth to a seven months’ child, a miserable little skeleton, thin enough to make anybody shudder, and which seemed to be suffering continually, to judge by the painful manner in which it moved its poor little hands about, which were as thin as a crab’s legs; but it lived, for all that. She said that she was married, but that she could not saddle herself with the child, so she left it with some neighbours, who promised to take care of it, and she went back to the farm.
But then, in her heart, which had been wounded so long, there arose something like brightness, an unknown love for that frail little creature which she had left behind her, but there was fresh suffering in that very love, suffering which she felt every hour and every minute, because she was parted from her child. What pained her most, however, was a mad longing to kiss it, to press it in her arms, to feel the warmth of its little body against her skin. She could not sleep at night; she thought of it the whole day long, and in the evening, when her work was done, she used to sit in front of the fire and look at it intently, like people do whose thoughts are far away.
They began to talk about her, and to tease her about the lover she must have. They asked her whether he was tall, handsome and rich. When was the wedding to be, and the christening? And often she ran away, to cry by herself, for these questions seemed to hurt her, like the prick of a pin, and in order to forget these irritations, she began to work still more energetically, and still thinking of her child, she sought
