This made her tremble so violently that she could
not take the saucepan off the fire; 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
neighborhood altogether.
Then a cloud 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: I write
to tell you that I am very ill. Our
neighbor, Monsieur Dentu,
begs you to come, if you can. For your
affectionate mother,
