“I am enceinte, do you hear? I am enceinte!”
He gasped for breath, as he was almost choked, and
so they remained, both of them, motionless and without
speaking, in the dark silence, which was only broken
by the noise made by a horse as he, pulled the hay
out of the manger and then slowly munched it.
When Jacques found that she was the stronger, he stammered
out: “Very well, I will marry you, as that
is the case.” But she did not believe his
promises. “It must be at once,” she
said. “You must have the banns put up.”
“At once,” he replied. “Swear
solemnly that you will.” He hesitated for
a few moments and then said: “I swear it,
by Heaven!”
Then she released her grasp and went away without
another word.
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 dinner time, and she said: “Has
Jacques left?” “Yes;” the man replied;
“I have got his place.”
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 the bolster, so that she
might not be heard. During the day, however,
she tried to obtain some information without exciting
any suspicion, 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,
before 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 her apron did not look too short.
The months went on, and she scarcely spoke now, and
when she was asked a question, did not appear to understand;
but she had a frightened look, 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.
