Whilst Deroulede and Juliette talked together Anne
Mie cleared the supper-table, then came and sat on
a low stool at madame’s feet. She took
no part in the conversation, but every now and then
Juliette felt the girl’s melancholy eyes fixed
almost reproachfully upon her.
When Juliette had retired with Petronelle, Deroulede
took Anne Mie’s hand in his.
“You will be kind to my guest, Anne Mie, won’t
you? She seems very lonely, and has gone through
a great deal.”
“Not more than I have,” murmured the young
girl involuntarily.
“You are not happy, Anne Mie? I thought...”
“Is a wretched, deformed creature ever happy?”
she said with sudden vehemence, as tears of mortification
rushed to her eyes, in spite of herself.
“I did not think that you were wretched,”
he replied with some sadness, “and neither in
my eyes, nor in my mother’s, are you in any
way deformed.”
Her mood changed at once. She clung to him,
pressing his hand between her own.
“Forgive me! I—I don’t
know what’s the matter with me to-night,”
she said with a nervous little laugh. “Let
me see, you asked me to be kind to Mademoiselle Marny,
did you not?”
He nodded with a smile.
“Of course I’ll be kind to her.
Isn’t every one kind to one who is young and
beautiful, and has great, appealing eyes, and soft,
curly hair? Ah me! how easy is the path in life
for some people! What do you want me to do, Paul?
Wait on her? Be her little maid? Soothe her
nerves or what? I’ll do it all, though in
her eyes I shall remain both wretched and deformed,
a creature to pity, the harmless, necessary house-dog...”
She paused a moment: said “Good-night”
to him, and turned to go, candle in hand, looking
pathetic and fragile, with that ugly contour of shoulder,
which Deroulede assured her he could not see.
The candle flickered in the draught, illumining the
thin, pinched face, the large melancholy eyes of the
faithful house-dog.
“Who can watch and bite!” she said half-audibly
as she slipped out of the room. “For I
do not trust you, my fine madam, and there was something
about that comedy this afternoon, which somehow, I
don’t quite understand.”
A day in the woods.
But whilst men and women set to work to make the towns
of France hideous with their shrieks and their hootings,
their mock-trials and bloody guillotines, they could
not quite prevent Nature from working her sweet will
with the country.
June, July, and August had received new names—they
were now called Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor,
but under these new names they continued to pour forth
upon the earth the same old fruits, the same flowers,
the same grass in the meadows and leaves upon the trees.
Messidor brought its quota of wild roses in the hedgerows,
just as archaic June had done. Thermidor covered
the barren cornfields with its flaming mantle of scarlet
poppies, and Fructidor, though now called August,
still tipped the wild sorrel with dots of crimson,
and laid the first wash of tender colour on the pale
cheeks of the ripening peaches.
