From the time that she was twelve, she had been the mistress of every fellow in the village.  She had corrupted boys of her own age in every conceivable manner and place.

Young men at the risk of imprisonment, and even steady, old, notable and venerable men, such as the farmer at Eclausiaux, Monsieur Martin, the ex-mayor and other highly respectable men, had been taken by the manners of that creature, and the reason why the rural policeman was not severe upon them, in spite of his love for summoning people before the magistrates, was, so people said, that he would have been obliged to take out a summons against himself.

The consequence was that she had grown up without being interfered with, and was the mistress of every fellow in the village, as the school-master said; who had himself been one of the fellows.  But the most curious part of the business was that no one was jealous.  They handed her on from one to the other, and when someone expressed his astonishment at this to her one day, she said to this unintelligent stranger: 

“Is everybody not satisfied?”

And then, how could any one of them, even if he had been jealous, have monopolized her?  They had no hold on her.  She was not selfish, and though she accepted all gifts, whether in kind or in money, she never asked for anything and she even appeared to prefer paying herself after her own fashion, by stealing.  All she seemed to care about as her reward was pilfering, and a crown put into her hand, gave her less pleasure than a halfpenny which she had stolen.  Neither was it any use to dream of ruling her as the sole male, or as the proud master of the hen roost, for which of them, no matter how broad shouldered he was, would have been capable of it?  Some had tried to vanquish her, but in vain.

How then, could any of them claim to be her master?  It would have been the same as wishing to have the sole right of baking their bread in the common oven, in which the whole village baked.

But there was one man who formed the exception, and that was Bru, the shepherd.

He lived in the fields in his movable hut, on cakes made of unleavened dough, which he kneaded on a stone and baked in the hot ashes, now here, now there, is a hole dug out in the ground, and heated with dead wood.  Potatoes, milk, hard cheese, blackberries, and a small cask of old gin that he had distilled himself, were his daily pittance; but he knew nothing about love, although he was accused of all sorts of horrible things, and therefore nobody dared abuse him to his face; in the first place, because Bru was a spare and sinewy man, who handled his shepherd’s crook like a drum-major does his staff; next, because of his three sheep dogs, who had teeth like wolves, and who knew nobody except their master; and lastly, for fear of the evil eye.  For Bru, it appeared, knew spells which would blight the corn, give the sheep foot rot, the cattle the rinder pest, make cows die in calving, and set fire to the ricks and stacks.