That very night she gave birth to a stillborn infant,
a girl.
Jeanne saw nothing of the funeral of Julien; she knew
nothing of it. She merely noticed at the end
of a day or two that Aunt Lison was back, and in her
feverish dreams which haunted her she persistently
sought to recall when the old maiden lady had left
“The Poplars,” at what period and under
what circumstances. She could not make this out,
even in her lucid moments, but she was certain of having
seen her subsequent to the death of “little
mother.”
* * * *
*
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PAUL
Jeanne did not leave her room for three months and
was so wan and pale that no one thought she would
recover. But she picked up by degrees. Little
father and Aunt Lison never left her; they had both
taken up their abode at “The Poplars.”
The shock of Julien’s death had left her with
a nervous malady. The slightest sound made her
faint and she had long swoons from the most insignificant
causes.
She had never asked the details of Julien’s
death. What did it matter to her? Did she
not know enough already? Every one thought it
was an accident, but she knew better, and she kept
to herself this secret which tortured her: the
knowledge of his infidelity and the remembrance of
the abrupt and terrible visit of the comte on the day
of the catastrophe.
And now she was filled with tender, sweet and melancholy
recollections of the brief evidences of love shown
her by her husband. She constantly thrilled at
unexpected memories of him, and she seemed to see
him as he was when they were betrothed and as she had
known him in the hours passed beneath the sunlight
in Corsica. All his faults diminished, all his
harshness vanished, his very infidelities appeared
less glaring in the widening separation of the closed
tomb. And Jeanne, pervaded by a sort of posthumous
gratitude for this man who had held her in his arms,
forgave all the suffering he had caused her, to remember
only moments of happiness they had passed together.
Then, as time went on and month followed month, covering
all her grief and reminiscences with forgetfulness,
she devoted herself entirely to her son.
He became the idol, the one thought of the three beings
who surrounded him, and he ruled as a despot.
A kind of jealousy even arose among his slaves.
Jeanne watched with anxiety the great kisses he gave
his grandfather after a ride on his knee, and Aunt
Lison, neglected by him as she had been by every one
else and treated often like a servant by this little
tyrant who could scarcely speak as yet, would go to
her room and weep as she compared the slight affection
he showed her with the kisses he gave his mother and
the baron.
Two years passed quietly, and at the beginning of
the third winter it was decided that they should go
to Rouen to live until spring, and the whole family
set out. But on their arrival in the old damp
house, that had been shut up for some time, Paul had
such a severe attack of bronchitis that his three
relatives in despair declared that he could not do
without the air of “The Poplars.”
They took him back there and he got well.
