Volume V Part 28 (1/2)
”But if he has not anything to eat?”
”He can cory; there'll always be victuals and a bed for hiiven him any money the first time he asked for some”
”But he was in debt; he would have been dishonored”
”And don't you think he'll get into debt just the saive hiood; but you won't pay any ht,Les Peuples and leaving the house where she had passed all her life threw Jeanne into a state of extreht ”I shall never be able to go away from here,” she said, when Rosalie ca
”You'll have to, all the sa te presently with the man ants to buy the chateau, and, if you don't sell it, you won't have a blade of grass to call your own in four years' time”
”Oh, I cannot! I cannot!” moaned Jeanne
But an hour afterwards ca for ten thousand francs What was to be done? Jeanne did not know, and, in her distress, she consulted Rosalie, who shrugged her shoulders, and observed:
”What did I tell you, madame? Oh, you'd both of you have been in a nice muddle if I hadn't come back”
Then, by her advice, Jeanne wrote back:
”My Dear Son: I cannot help you any ed to sell Les Peuples But I shall always have a home for you whenever you choose to return to your poor old h you
Jeanne”
The lawyer caar baker, and Jeanne herself received therounds Then a ht, at the sa on the Montivilliers high-road, near Goderville
After she had signed the deeds she went out to the baroness's avenue, and walked up and down, heart-broken andfarewells to the trees, the worm-eaten bench under the plane tree, the wood, the old elainst which she had leant so many times, and the hillock, where she had so often sat, and whence she had watched the Co towards the sea on the awful day of Julien's death She stayed out until the evening, and at last Rosalie went to look for her and brought her in A tall peasant of about twenty-five aiting at the door He greeted Jeanne in a friendly way, as if he had known her a long while:
”Good-day, Madame Jeanne, how are you? Mother told , and I wanted to knohat you meant to take with you, so that I couldthe farm work”
He was Rosalie's son--Julien's son and Paul's brother Jeanne's heart almost stood still as she looked at hi fellow She gazed at hi to find any likeness to her husband or her son He was robust and ruddy-cheeked and had hisin his face which reh she could not discover where the reseed if you could show s now,”
continued the lad
But she did not know herself yet what she should be able to take, her new house was so sain in a week's tihts, and h a sad one, in her dull, hopeless life She went fro the pieces of furniture which were associated in herwhich we live becomes, in tiets old, and we look at its faded colors, its frayed coverings, its tattered linings, we are reminded of the prominent dates and events of our existence by these time-worn objects which have been the mute companions of our happy and of our sad itated as if the decisions she werehad been of the last is she should take with her, often hesitating and altering her mind at every moment, as she stood unable to decide the respective merits of two armchairs, or of some old escritoire and a still older worktable She opened and searched every drawer, and tried to connect every object with soone days, and when at last she made up her mind and said: ”Yes, I shall take this,” the article she had decided upon was taken downstairs and put into the dining-room She wished to keep the whole of her bedroo, and she also took a few of the drawing-roons she had always liked ever since she could remember--the fox and the stork, the fox and the crow, the ant and the grasshopper, and the solitary heron
One day, as she andering all over this house she should so soon have to leave, Jeanne went up into the garret She was amazed when she opened the door; there lay articles of furniture of every description, soain stored away siht and put in their places She recognized a hundred little odds and ends which used to be downstairs and had disappeared without her noticing their absence--things of no value which she had often used, insignificant little articles, which had stood fifteen years beneath her eyes and had never attracted her attention, but which now--suddenly discovered in the lus older still and which she could quite distinctly re when she first returned from the convent--became as precious in her eyes as if they had been valued friends that had been a long tiht, and as she looked at theht have done if any very reserved acquaintances had suddenly begun to talk and to reveal thoughts and feelings she had never drea to another, and remembered little incidents in connection with them, her heart felt as if it would break ”Why, this is the china cup I cracked a few days before I was married, and here isto open the wooden gate the rain had swollen”
Besides all these fas she had never seen before, which had belonged to her grandparents or her great-grandparents Covered with dust they looked like sad, forsaken exiles from another century, their history and adventures for ever lost, for there was no one living noho had known those who had chosen, bought and treasured them, or who had seen the hands which had so often touched the at theers leaving their traces on the thick dust; and she stayed for a long, long tihted by a little skylight